EH Bfl I HUM 5HHI HHHB ■ ■ H Hi a ■ H ■1 - w flHI ^■SBB HS ■n IH II8BH HHH JBMnnHI nttfli H S3 am BHflHH hHHh ■ HB^mffinBs Hu&raHHBffi R In BBS no SBBmmHRm Glass _ Book_ THE MINER'S DREAM. ROUGHING IT BT MAM TWAIN, (SAMTJEL L. CLEMENS.) FULLY ILLUSTRATED BY EMINENT ARTISTS. (ISSUTO BT SUBSCRIPTION ONXT, AND NOT FOR 8ALR IN BOftK 8TORE8.) (M0EDINTS OF ANY STATE DE8IBI5TO A COPT SHOULD ADDRESS THX PUBLISHERS AS BBLOWj HARTFORD, CONN. : AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1886. ■A' Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by the AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TO CALVIN H. HIGBIE, Of California, an Honest Man, a Genial Comrade, and a Steadfast Friend. THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED By the Author, In Memory of the Curious Time When We Two WEBS MILLIONAIRES FOB TEN DAYS. PEEFATOET. This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pre- tentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information con- cerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmina- tion of the silver-mining fever in Nevada — a curious episode, in some respects ; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land ; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it. Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of infor- mation in the book. I regret this very much ; but really it could not be helped : information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts ; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification. THE AUTHOR. PAAB The Milks' Dream (Yvli Page,) Face Page Frontispiece. Exvioub Contemplations 20 Innocent Dreams 21 Light Traveling Order 23 The " Allen " 23 Inducements to Purchase 24 The Facetious Driver 25 Pleasing News 26 The SniYNX 27 Meditation 32 On Business 33 Author as Gulliver 33 A Tough Statement 35 Third Trip op the Unabridged 38 A Powerful Glass 41 An Heirloom 42 Our Landlord 42 Dignified Exile 43 Drinking Slumgullion 44 A Joke without Cream 45 Pullman Car Dintng-Saloon 47 Our Morning Ride 49 PRAnuE Dogs 50 A Cayote 51 Showing Respect to Relatives 52 The Conductor 55 Teaching a Subordinate 57 Jack and the Elderly Pllgrim 58 Crossing the Platte 61 I Began to Pray 62 A New Departure 63 Suspended Operations 65 A Wonderful Lle . . 68 Tad>piece 69 vi Illustrations. 35. Here He Comes 71 36. Changing Horses 72 37. Riding The Avalanche 78 as. Imuax Country 76 3i). A Proposed Fist Fight 81 40. From Behind the Door 82 41. Slade as an Executioner 84 & An Unpleasant View 85 43. Unappreciated Politeness 88 44. Slade in Court 92 45. A Wife's Lamentations 95 46. The Concentrated Inhabitant 99 47. The South Pass (Full Page,) Face Page 100 4S. The Parted Streams 101 49. It Spoiled the Melon 102 50. Given Over to the Cayote and the Kaven „ 103 51. "Don't Come Here" 104 52. "Think I'M a Fool" 105 53. The "Destroying Angel" 106 54. Effects of "Valley Tan" 109 55. One Crest 110 56. The Other 110 57. The Vagrant Ill 58. Portrait of Heber Kimball 112 59. Portrait oe Beigham Young 113 60. The Contractors before the Ejng 116 61. I was Touched 117 62. The Endowment, tail-piece 118 63. Favorite Wife and D. 4 120 64. Needed Marking 121 65. A Remarkable Resemblance 124 66. The Family Bedstead 126 67. The Miraculous Compass 131 68. Three Sides to a Question 137 69. Result of High Freights 138 70. A Shriveled Quarter 339 71. An Object of Pity 140 72. Tail-Piece 141 73. Tail-Piece 145 74. Goshott Indians hanging around Stations 147 75. The Drive for Life 148 76. Greeley's Ride 150 77. Bottling an Anecdote 154 78. Tail-Piece 156 79- Contemplation 158 80. The Washoe Zephyr 159 81. The Governor's House „ 161 82. Dark Disclosures 162 83. The Irish Brigade 163 34. Recreation 164 85. The Tarantula 165 86. Light thrown on the Subject 166 &i. I Steered 169 88. Thb Invalid 170 19- The Restored , 171 Illustrations. yii JO. Our House 17* 91. At Business 174 92. Fight at Lake Tahoe (Full, JTage.) Face Page 176 93. "totj might think him an american house * 179 94. Unexpected Elevation 180 95. Universally Unsettled 181 96. Riding the Plug 182 97. Wanted Exercise 183 98. Borrowing made easy 186 99. Free Rides : 188 100. Satisfactory Vouchers 190 101. Needs Praying for 191 102. Map of Toll Roads 192 103. Unloading Silver Bricks 194 104. View in Humboldt Mountains 196 105. Going to Humboldt 199 106. Ballou's Bedfellow 201 107. Pleasures of Camping Out 202 108. The Secret Search 205 109. " Cast your Eye on that " 207 110. " We've got it" 210 111. Incipient Million aii-.es 212 112. Rocks— Tail-Piece 214 113. "Do You see it?" 216 114. Farewell Sweet River 218 115. The Rescue 219 116. "Mr. Arkansas" 222 117. An Armed Ally 225 118. Crossing the Flood 227 119. Advance in a Circle 229 120. The Songster 230 121. The Foxes have Holes— Tail-Piece 231 122. A Flat Failure 233 123. The Last Match 234 1*4 Discarded Vices 236 125. Flames— Tail-Piece 237 126. Camping in the Snow (Full Page,) Face Page 238 127. It was thus we met 240 128. Taking Possession 242 129. A Great Effort 244 130. Rearranging and Shifting 246 131. We left Lamented 249 132. Picture of Townsend's Tunnel 250 133. Quartz Mill 253 134. Another Process of Amalgamation 254 135. First Quartz Mill in Nevada 256 136. A Slice of Rich Ore 257 137. The Saved Brother 260 138. On a Secret Expedition 263 139. Lake Mono (Full Page,) Face Page 265 140. Rather Soapy 26< 141. A Bark under Full Sail 266 142. A Model Boarding House 266 143. Life amid Death 271 144. A Jump foe Life 378 viii Illustrations. 145. "Stove Heap gone" 275 146. Interviewing the " Wide "West " 279 147. Worth a Million 280 143. Millionaires Laying Plans 282 149. Dangerously Sick 287 150. Worth Nothing „ 288 151. The Compromise 290 152. One of my Failures 293 153. Target Shooting 294 154. As City Editor 595 155. The Entire Market 296 156. A Friend Indeed 297 157. Union— Tail-Piece 298 15S. An Educational Report 301 159. No Particular Hurry 302 160. Birds Eye View of Virginia City and Mt. Davidson 304 161. ANEW Mine 307 162. Try a Few 309 163. Portrait of Mr. Stewart 310 164. Selling a Mine 311 165. Couldn't Wait 315 166. The Great " Flour Sack " Procession (Full Page,) Face Page 317 167. Tail-Piece 319 168. A Nabob 321 169. Magnificence and Misery 32S 170. A Friendly Driver 326 171. Astonishes the Natives 327 172. Col. Jack Weakens 82* 173. ScottyBriggs and the Minister 3Si 174. Regulating Matters 335 175. Didn't Shook his Mother 337 176. ScottyasS. S. Teacher 338 177. The Man who had Killed his Dozen 840 178. The Unprejudiced Jury , 342 179. A Desperado giving Reference 344 180. Satisfying a Foe 346 181. Tail-Piece 351 382. Giving Information 353 183. A Walking Battery 355 184. Overhauling his Manifest 358 185. Ship— Tail-Piece 359 186. The Heroes and Heroines of the Story . 361 187. Dissolute Author 362 188. There sat the Lawyer 365 189. Jonah Outdone 367 190. DOLLINGER 370 191. Low Bridge 371 192. Shortening Sail 372 193. Lightening Ship 373 194. The Marvellous Rescue 375 195. Silver Bricks 377 196. Timber Supports 379 197. From Gallery to Gallery 389 198. Jim Blaine 384 199. Hubbah fob Nixon • 388 Illustrations. ix 200. Miss Wagner 888 201. Waiting fob a Customer 387 202. Was to be There 388 203. The Monument 889 204. WnEBE is the Ram ?— Tail-Piece 390 205. Chinese "Wash Bill 392 206. Imitation 393 207. Chinese Lotteby 396 208. Chinese Mebchant at Home— Tail Piece 397 209. An Old Fbtend 399 210. Fabewell and Accident 403 211. "Gimme a Cigar" 404 212. The Hebald of Glad News 406 213. Flag— Tail-Piece 407 214. ANew England Scene 409 215. A Vabiable Climate 410 216. Sacbamento and Thbee Houbs Away 418 217. "Fetch Heb Out" 416 218. "Well if it aint a Child" 417 219. A Genuine Live Woman 418 220. The Gbace of a Kangaboo 420 221. Dbeams Dissipated 421 222. The "OneHoese Shay" Outdone 422 223. Hard on the Innocents 423 224. Dby Bones Shaken 423 225. " On ! What shall I do ! " 424 226. "Get out youb Towel my Deab" 425 227. "We Will Omit the Benediction " 426 228. Slinking 429 229. A Pbize 431 230. A Look in at the Window 432 231. " Do It Stbangee * 433 232. The Old Collegiate 436 233. Stbiking a Pocket 438 234. Tom Quartz 440 235. An Advantage Taken 441 236. Aftek an Excubsion 442 237. The TnBEE Captains 445 238. The Old Admibal 448 239. The Desebted Field 449 240. Williams 453 241. Scene on the Sandwich Islands 455 242. Fashionable Attibe 456 243. A Bite 457 244. Reconnoitebing 458 245. Eating Tamabinds 458 246. Looking fob Mischief 461 247. A Family Likeness 468 248. Sit Down to Listen 467 249. "My Bbotheb, We Twins" 469 250. Exteaobdinaey Capebs 470 251. A Load of Hay 47i 252. Marching Through Georgia— Tail-Piece 472 253. Sandwich Island Giels 474 254. Original Ham Sandwich 475 x Illustrations. OO, I Kissed Him fob His Mother" 478 256. an Outsider— Tail-Piece 4TO 257. Ax Enemy's Prayer 482 238, Visiting the Missionaries 484 250. Full Church Dkess 485 260. Playing Empire 486 261. Royalty and its Satellites 488 262. A IIiGH Private— Tail-Piece 489 263. A Modern Funeral 492 264. Former Fukebal Orgies 497 265. A Passenger 499 266. Moonlight on the Water 501 267. Going into the Mountains (Full Page,) Face Page 502 268. Evening— Tail-Piece 503 269. The Demented 505 270. Discussing Turnips 507 271. Greeley's Letter 509 272. Kealakekua Bay and Cook's Monument 514 273. The Ghostly Builders 518 274. On Guard 519 275. Breaking the Tabu 521 276. Surf Bathing 525 277. Surf Bathing a Failure 526 278. City of Refuge 527 279. The Queen's Kock : 529 280. Tail-Piece 531 281. The Pillar of Fire 533 282. The Crater 535 283. Broke Through 539 284. Fire Fountains 540 285. Lava Stream 542 2S& A Tidal Wave 543 287. Trip on the Milky "Way 545 288. A View in the Iao Valley (Full Page,) Face Page 547 289. Magnificent Sport 549 290. Eleven Miles to See 553 291. Chased by a Storm 554 292. Leaving Work 555 293. Tail-Piece 557 294. Our Amusements 559 295. Severe Case of Stage Feight 561 296. My Three Parquette Allies 562 297. Sawyer in the Circle 562 298. A Predicament 567 299. The Best of the Joke 569 300. THB E2TD I7fi CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Hy Brother appointed Secretary of Nevada — I Envy His Prospective Adventures — Am Appointed Private Secretary Under Him — My Contentment Complete — Packed in One Hour — Dreams and Visions — On the Missouri River — A Bully Boat 19 CHAPTER II. Arrive at St. Joseph — Only Twenty-five Pounds Baggage Allowed — Farewell to Kid Gloves and Dress Coats — Armed to the Teeth — The "Allen" — A Cheerful Weapon — Persuaded to Buy a Mule — Schedule of Luxuries — We Leave the " States " — " Our Coach " — Mails for the Indians — Between a Wink and an Earthquake — A Modern Sphynx and How She Entertained Us — A Sociable Heifer. 23 CHAPTER III. " The Thoroughbrace is Broke" — Mails Delivered Properly — Sleeping Under Difficulties — A Jackass Rabbit Meditating, and on Business — A Modern Gulliver — Sage-brush — Overcoats as an Article of Diet — Sad Fate of a Camel — Warning to Experimenters 29 CHAPTER IV. Making Our Bed — Assaults by the Unabridged — At a Station — Our Driver a Great and Shining Dignitary — Strange Place for a Front- yard — Accommodations — Double Portraits — An Heirloom — Our Worthy Landlord — " Fixings and Tilings " — An Exile — Slumgul- lion — A Well Furnished Table — The Landlord Astonished — Table Etiquette — Wild Mexican Mules — Stage-coaching and Railroading. 37 CHAPTER V. New Acquaintances — The Cayote — A Dog's Experiences — A Disgusted Dog — The Relatives of the Cayote — Meals Taken Away from Home 48 CHAPTER VI. The Division Superintendent — The Conductor — The Driver — One Hun- dred and Fifty Miles' Drive Without Sleep — Teaching a Subor- dinate — Our Old Friend Jack and a Pilgrim — Ben Holliday Com- pared to Moses 54 CHAPTER VII. tVverland City — Crossing the Platte — Bemis's Buffalo Hunt — Assault by a Buffalo — Bemis's Horse Goes Crazy — An Impromptu Circus — A New Departure — Bemis Finds Refuge in a Tree — Escapes Finally by a Wonderful Method 60 CHAPTER VIII. The Pony Express — Fifty Miles Without Stopping — " Here he Comes " — Alkali Water — Riding an Avalanche — Indian Massacre 70 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAGB Among the Indians — An Unfair Advantage — Laying on our Arms — A Midnight Murder — Wrath of Outlaws — A Dangerous, yet Valuable Citizen 75 CHAPTER X. History of Slade — A Proposed Fist-fight — Encounter with Jules — Paradise of Outlaws — Slade as Superintendent — As Executioner — A Doomed Whisky Seller — A Prisoner — A Wife's Bravery — An Ancient Enemy Captured — Enjoying a Luxury — Hob-nobbing with Slade — Too Polite — A Happy Escape 80 CHAPTER XI. Slade in Montana — "On a Spree" — In Court — Attack, on a Judge- Arrest by the Vigilantes — Turn out of the Miners — Execution of Slade — Lamentations of His Wife — Was Slade a Coward ? 90 CHAPTER XII. A Mormon Emigrant Train — The Heart of the Rocky Mountains — Pure Saleratus — A Natural Ice-House — An Entire Inhabitant — In Sight of " Eternal Snow " — The South Pass — The Parting Streams — An Unreliable Letter Carrier — Meeting of Old Friends — A Spoiled. Watermelon — Down the Mountain — A Scene of Desolation — Lost in the Dark — Unnecessary Advice — U. S. Troops and Indians — Sub- lime Spectacle — Another Delusion Dispelled — Among the Angels. . 9? CHAPTER XIII. Mormons and Gentiles — Exhilarating Drink, and its Effect on Bemis — Salt Lake City — A Great Contrast — A Mormon Vagrant — Talk with a Saint — A Visit to the " King " — A Happy Simile 108 CHAPTER XlV. Mormon Contractors — How Mr. Street Astonished Them — The Case Before Brigham Young, and How he Disposed of it — Polygamy Viewed from a New Position 114 CHAPTER XV. A Gentile Den — Polygamy Discussed — Favorite Wife and D. 4 — Hennery for Retired Wives — Children Need Marking — Cost of a Gift to No. 6 — A Penny- whistle Gift and its Effects — Fathering the Foundlings — It Resembled Him — The Family Bedstead 119 CHAPTER XVI. The Mormon Bible — Proofs of its Divinity — Plagiarism of its Authors — Story of Nephi — Wonderful Battle — Kilkenny Cats Outdone 127 CHAPTER XVII. Three Sides to all Questions — Everything " A Quarter " — Shriveled Up — Emigrants and White Shirts at a Discount — " Forty-Niners " — Above Par — Real Happiness 136 CHAPTER XVIII. Alkali Desert — Romance of Crossing Dispelled — Alkali Dust— Effect on the Mules — Universal Thanksgiving 143 CONTENTS. Xin CHAPTER XIX. pace rhe Digger Indians Compared with the Bushmen of Africa — Food, Life and Characteristics — Cowardly Attack on a Stage Coach — A Brave Driver — The Noble Red Man 146 CHAPTER XX. The Great American Desert — Forty Miles on Bones — Lakes Without Outlets — Greely's Remarkable Ride — Hank Monk, the Renowned Driver — Fatal Effects of " Corking " a Story — Bald-Headed Anec- dote 150 CHAPTER XXI. Alkali Dust — Desolation and Contemplation — Carson City — Our Journey Ended — We are Introduced to Several Citizens — A Strange Rebuke — A Washoe Zephyr at Play — Its Office Hours — Governor's Palace — Government Offices— Our French Landlady Bridget O'Flannigan — Shadow Secrets — Cause for a Disturbance at Once — The Irish Bri- gade — Mrs. O'Flannigan's Boarders — The Surveying Expedition — Escape of the Tarantulas 15? CHAPTER XXII. The Son of a Nabob — Start for Lake Tahoe — Splendor of the Views — Trip on the Lake — Camping Out — Rein vigo rating Climate — Clear- ing a Tract of Land — Securing a Title — Outhouse and Fences 168 CHAPTER XXIII. A Happy Life — Lake Tahoe and its Moods — Transparency of the Waters — A Catastrophe — Fire ! Fire ! — A Magnificent Spectacle — Homeless Again — We take to the Lake — A Storm — Return to Carson 173 CHAPTER XXIV. Resolve to Buy a Horse — Horsemanship in Carson — A Temptation — Advice Given Me Freely — I Buy the Mexican Plug — My First Ride — A Good Bucker — I Loan the Plug — Experience of Borrowers — At- tempts to Sell — Expense of the Experiment — A Stranger Taken In. 178 CHAPTER XXV. The Mormons in Nevada — How to Persuade a Loan from Them — Early History of the Territory — Silver Mines Discovered — The New Terri- torial Government — A Foreign One and a Poor One — Its Funny Struggles for Existence — No Credit, no Cash — Old Abe Currey Sus- tains it and its Officers — Instructions and Vouchers — An Indian's Endorsement— Toll-Gates 185 CHAPTER XXVI. The Silver Fever— State of the Market— Silver Bricks— Tales Told- Offforthe Humboldt Mines 1»3 CHAPTER XXVII. Our manner of going — Incidents of the Trip — A Warm but Too Familiar a Bedfellow — Mr. Ballou Objects — Sunshine amid Clouds — Safely Arrived 1 98 xiv Contents. CHAPTER XXVIII. Arrive tit the Mountains — Building Our Cabin — My First Prospecting Tour — Mv First Gold Mine — Pockets Filled With Treasures — Filtering the News to* My Companions— The Bubble Pricked— All Not Gold That Glitters. . . 20$ CHAPTER XXIX. Out Prospecting — A Silver Mine At Last — Making a Fortune With Sledge and Drill — A Hard Road to Travel — We Own in Claims — A Rocky Country . 211 CHAPTER XXX. Disinterested Friends — How "Feet" Were Sold — We Quit Tunnelling— A Trip to Esmeralda — My Companions — An Indian Prophesy — A Flood — Our Quarters During It 215 CHAPTER XXXI. The Guests at "Honey Lake Smith's "—" Bully Old Arkansas "—" Our Land- lord "—Determined to Fight— The Landlord's Wife— The Bully Con- quered by Her — Another Start — Crossing the Carson — A Narrow Escape — Following Our Own Track — A New Guide — Lost in the Snow 221 CHAPTER XXXn. Desperate Situation — Attempts to Make a Fire — Our Horses leave us — We Find Matches — One, Two, Three and the Last — No Fire — Death Seems Inevitable — We Mourn Over Our Evil Lives — Discarded Vices — We For- give Each Other — An Affectionate Farewell — The Sleep of Oblivion. . . 232 CHAPTER XXXIII. Return of Consciousness — Ridiculous Developments — A Station House — Bit- ter Feelings — Fruits of Repentance — Resurrected Vices 238 CHAPTER XXXTV. About Carson — General Buncombe — Hyde vs. Morgan — How Hyde Lost His Ranch — The Great Landslide Case — The Trial — General Buncombe in Court — A Wonderful Decision — A Serious Afterthought 241 CHAPTER XXXV. A New Travelling Companion — All Full and No Accommodations — How Cap- tain Nye found Room — and Caused Our Leaving to be Lamented — The Uses of Tunnelling — A Notable Example — We Go into the " Claim " Bus- iness and Fail — At the Bottom 248 CHAPTER XXXVL A Quartz Mill — Amalgamation — " Screening Tailings " — First Quartz Mill in Nevada — Fire Assay — A Smart Assayer — I stake for an advance 252 CHAPTER XXXVII. The Whiteman Cement Mine — Story of its Discovery — A Secret Expedition — A Nocturnal Adventure — A Distressing Position — A Failure and a Week's Holiday 259 CHAPTER XXXVni. Mono Lake — Shampooing Made Easy — Thoughtless Act of Our Dog and the Results — Lye Water — Curiosities of the Lake — Free Hotel — Some Funny Incidents a Little Overdrawn 265 Contents. xr CHAPTER XXXIX. Visit to the Islands in Lake Mono — Ashes and Desolation — Life Amid Death Our Boat Adrift — A Jump For Life — A Storm On the Lake — A Mass of Soap Suds — Geological Curiosities — A Week On the Sierras — A Narrow Escape From a Funny Explosion — " Stove Heap Gone " 270 CHAPTER XL. The "Wide West" Mine— It is " Interviewed " by Higbie— A Blind Lead- Worth a Million — We are Rich At Last — Plans for the Future 27Y CHAPTER XLL A Rheumatic Patient — Day Dreams — An Unfortunate Stumble — I Leave Sud- denly — Another Patient — Higbie in the Cabin — Our Balloon Bursted — Worth Nothing — Regrets and Explanations — Our Third Partner 285 CHAPTER XLIL What to do Next '—Obstacles I Had Met With— "Jack of All Trades"— Mining Again — Target Shooting — I Turn City Editor — I Succeed Finely 292 CHAPTER XLIII. My Friend Boggs — The School Report — Boggs Pays Me An Old Debt — Virgin- ia City 299 CHAPTER XLIV. Flush Times — Plenty of Stock — Editorial Puffing — Stocks Given Me — Salting Mines — A Tragedian In a New Role 306 CHAPTER XLV. Flush Times Continue — Sanitary Commission Fund — Wild Enthusiasm of the People — Would not wait to Contribute — The Sanitary Flour Sack — It is Carried to Gold Hill and Dayton — Final Reception in Virginia — Results of the Sale— A Grand Total 315 CHAPTER XLVI. The Nabobs of Those Days — John Smith as a Traveler — Sudden Wealth — A Sixty-Thousand-Dollar Horse — A Smart Telegraph Operator — A Nabob in New York City — Charters an Omnibus — " Walk in, It's All Free "-^ "You Can't Pay a Cent "—"Hold On, Driver, I Weaken" — Sociability of New Yorkers" 320 CHAPTER XL VII. Buck Fanshaw's Death — The Cause Thereof— Preparations for His Burial — Scotty Briggs the Committee Man— He Visits the Minister— Scotty Can't Play His Hand— The Minister Gets Mixed— Both Begin to See— " All Down Again But Nine"— Buck Fanshaw as a Citizen— How To "Shook Your Mother " — The Funeral— Scotty Briggs as a Sunday School Teacher. . . . 329 CHAPTER XLVm. The First Twenty-Six Graves in Nevada — The Prominent Men of the County The Man Who Had Killed His Dozen — Trial by Jury — Specimen Jurors— A Private Grave Yard — The Desperadoes — Who They Killed — Waking up the Weary Passenger — Satisfaction Without Fighting 899 xvi Contents. CHAPTER XLIX Fatal Shooting Affrays— Robbery and Desperate Affray— A Specimen City OfiL cial— A Marked Man— A Street Fight— Punishment of Crime S4T CHAPTER L. Captain Ned Blakely — Bill Nookes Receives Desired Information— Killing of Blakely's Mate — A Walking Battery— Blakely Secures Nookes— Hang First and Be Tried Afterwards — Captain Blakely as a Chaplain — The' First Chapter of Genesis Read at a Hanging — Nookes Hung — Blakely's Regrets 352 CHAPTER LI. The Weekly Occidental — A Ready Editor — A Novel — A Concentration of Tal- ent — The Heroes and the Heroines — The Dissolute Author Engaged — Ex- traordinary Havoc With the Novel — A Highly Romantic Chapter — The Lovers Separated — Jonah Out-done — A Lost Poem — The Aged Pilot Man — Storm On the Erie Canal — Dollinger the Pilot Man — Terrific Gale — Danger Increases — A Crisis A rived — Saved as if by a Miracle 360 CHAPTER LII. Freights to California — Silver Bricks — Under Ground Mines — Timber Supports —A Visit to the Mines— The Caved Mines— Total of Shipments in 1863. 376 CHAPTER LIII. Jim Blaine and his Grandfather's Ram — Filkin's Mistake — Old Miss Wagner and her Glass Eye — Jacobs, the Coffin Dealer — Waiting for a Customer — His Bargain With Old Robbins — Robbins Sues for Damage and Collects — A New Use for Missionaries — The Effect — His Uncle Lem. and the Use Providence Made of Him — Sad Fate of Wheeler — Devotion of His Wife — A Model Monument— What About the Ram ? 382 CHAPTER LIV. Chinese in Virginia City— Washing Bills— Habit of Imitation— Chinese Immi- gration—A Visit to Chinatown— Messrs. Ah Sing, Hong Wo, See Yup, &c. 391 CHAPTER LV. Tired of Virginia City— An Old Schoolmate — A Two Years' Loan— Acting as an Editor- — Almost Receive an Offer — An Accident — Three Drunken Anecdotes — Last Look at Mt. Davidson — A Beautiful Incident 398 CHAPTER LVI. Off for San Francisco— Western and Eastern Landscapes— The Hottest place on Earth— Summer and Winter 408 CHAPTER LVII. California — Novelty of Seeing a Woman — " Well if it ain't a Child !" — One Hundred and Fifty Dollars for a Kiss — Waiting for a turn 414 CHAPTER LVIII. Life in San Francisco — Worthless Stocks — My First Earthquake — Reporto- rial Instincts — Effects of the Shocks — Incidents and Curiosities — Sabbath Breakers — The Lodger and the Chambermaid — A Sensible Fashion to Follow — Effects of the Earthquake on the Ministers 41? Contents. xvii CHAPTER LIX. Poor Again — Slinking as a Business — A Model Collector — Misery loves Com- pany — Comparing Notes for Comfort — A Streak of Luck — Finding a, Dime — Wealthy by Comparison — Two Sumptuous Dinners 428 CHAPTER LX. An Old Friend — An Educated Miner — Pocket Mining — Freaks of Fortune. . . 435 CHAPTER LXI. Dick Baker and his Cat — Tom Quartz's Peculiarities — On an Excursion — Ap- pearance On His Return — A Prejudiced Cat — Empty Pockets and a Ro- ving Life 439 CHAPTER LXII. Bound for the Sandwich Islands— The Three Captains — The Old Admiral — His Daily Habits — His Well Fought Fields — An Unexpected Opponent — The Admiral Overpowered — The Victor Declared a Hero 443. CHAPTER LXIII. Arrival at the Islands — Honolulu — What I Saw There — Dress and Habits of the Inhabitants — The Animal Kingdom — Fruits and Delightful Effects. . 454 CHAPTER LXIV. An Excursion — Captain Phillips and his Turn-Out — A Horseback Ride — A Vicious Animal — Nature and Art — Interesting Ruins — All Praise to the Missionaries 459 CHAPTER LXV. Interesting Mementoes and Relics — An Old Legend of a Frightful Leap— An Appreciative Horse — Horse Jockeys and Their Brothers — A New Trick — A Hay Merchant — Good Country for Horse Lovers 464 CHAPTER LXVL A Saturday Afternoon — Sandwich Island Girls on a Frolic — The Poi Merchant — Grand Gala Day — A Native Dance — Church Membership — Cats and Officials — An Overwhelming Discovery 47 J CHAPTER LXVII. The Legislature of the Island — What Its President Has Seen — Praying for an Enemy — Women's Rights — Romantic Fashions — Worship of the Shark — Desire for Dress — Full Dress — Not Paris Style — Playing Empire — Officials and Foreign Ambassadors — Overwhelming Magnificence 480 CHAPTER LXVIII. A Royal Funeral— Order of Procession— Pomp and Ceremony — A Striking Contrast — A Sick Monarch— Human Sacrifices at His Death— Burial Orgies 400 CHAPTER LXrX " Once more upon the Waters." — A Noisy Passenger — Several Silent Ones— A Moonlight Scene — Fruits and Plantations 498 at xviii Contents. CHAPTER LXX. A Droll Character — Mrs. Beazely and Her Son — Meditations on Turnips — A Letter from Horace Greeley — An Indignant Rejoinder — The Letter Translated but too Late 50$ CHAPTER LXXI. Kealakekua Bay — Death of Captain Cook — His Monument — Its Construction — On Board the Schooner 512 CHAPTER LXXII. Young Kanakas in New England — A Temple Built by Ghosts — Female Bath- ers—I Stood Guard — Women and Whiskey — A Fight for Religion — Arri- val of Missionaries 517 CHAPTER LXXIII. Native Canoes — Surf Bathing — A Sanctuary — How Built — The Queen's Rock — Curiosities — Petrified Lava 524 CHAPTER LXXIV. Visit to the Volcano — The Crater — Pillar of Fire — Magnificent Spectacle — A Lake of Fire 532 CHAPTER LXXV. The North Lake — Fountains bf Fire — Streams of Burning Lava — Tidal Waves 538 CHAPTER LXXVI. A Reminiscence — Another Horse Story — My Ride with the Retired Milk Horse — A Picnicing Excursion — Dead Volcano of Holeakala — Compar- ison with Vesuvius — An Inside View 544 CHAPTER LXXVIL A Curious Character — A Series of Stories — Sad Fate of a Liar — Evidence of Insanity 551 CHAPTER LXXVm. Return to San Francisco — Ship Amusements — Preparing for Lecturing — Val- uable Assistance Secured — My First Attempt — The Audience Carried — "All's Well that Ends Well." 558 CHAPTER LXXIX. Highwaymen — A Predicament — A Huge Joke — Farewell to California — At Home Again — Great Changes. Moral 664 APPENDIX. A.— Brief Sketch of Mormon History 572 B, — The Mountain Meadows Massacre 576 C. — Concerning a Frightful Assassination that was never Consummated .... 580 OHAPTEE I. MY brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory — an office of such majesty that it con- centrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of " Mr. Secretary," gave to the great posi- tion an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor, but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going to make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to travel ! I never had been away from home, and that word " travel " had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffa- loes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and the ocean, and " the isthmus " as if it was nothing of any conse- quence to have seen those marvels face to lace. What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, when he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime posi- tion of private secretary under him, it appeared to me that 20 GETTING READY. the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament was rolled together as a scroll ! I had nothing more to desire. My contentment was complete. At the end of an hour or ENVIOUS CONTEMPLATIONS. two I was ready for the journey. Not much packing up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stage from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a small quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve years ago — not a single rail of it. I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months — I had no thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly long years ! I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in due time, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis wharf on board a steamboat bound up the Missouri River. HERMAPHRODITE STEAMER. 21 We were six days going from St. Louis to " St. Jo." — a trip that was so dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on my memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that many days. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a confused jumble of savage-looking snags, which we deliberately walked' over with one wheel or the other ; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and then retired from and climbed over in some softer place ; and of sand-bars which we roosted on occasion- ally, and rested, and then got out our crutches and sparred over. In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. by land, for she was walking most of the time, anyhow — climbing over reefs and clambering over snags patiently and laboriously r^P i//m INNOCENT DREAMS. all day long. The captain said she was a " bully " boat, and all she wanted was more " shear" and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had the deep sagacity not to say so. CHAPTEE II. THE first thing we did on that glad evening that landed us at St. Joseph was to hunt up the stage-office, and pay a hundred and fifty dollars apiece for tickets per overland coach to Carson City, Nevada. The next morning, bright and early, we took a hasty break- fast, and hurried to the starting-place. Then an inconvenience presented itself which we had not properly appreciated before, namely, that one cannot make a heavy traveling trunk stand for twenty-five pounds of baggage — because it weighs a good deal more. But that was all we could take — twenty-five pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and make a selection in a good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful twenty-five pounds apiece all in one valise, and shipped the trunks back to St. Louis again. It was a sad parting, for now we had no swallow-tail coats and white kid gloves to wear at Pawnee receptions in the Rocky Mountains, and no stove- pipe hats nor patent-leather boots, nor anything else necessary to make life calm and peaceful. We were reduced to a war' footing. Each of us put on a rough, heavy suit of clothing, woolen army shirt and " stogy " boots included ; and into the valise we crowded a few white shirts, some under-clothing and such things. My brother, the Secretary, took along about four pounds of United States statutes and six pounds of Unabridged Dictionary; for we did not know — poor inno- cents — that such things could be bought in San Francisco on one day and received in Carson City the next. I was armed FORMIDABLE ARMAMENT 23 to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven- shooter, which carried a ball like a homoeopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It ap- peared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only had one fault — you could not hit anything with it. One of our " conductors " practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was safe ; but as soon as she went to mov- ing about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief. The Secretary had a small-sized Colt's revolver strapped around him for protection against the Indians, and to guard against accidents he carried it uncapped. Mr. George Bemis was dismally fonnidable. George Bemis was our fellow-traveler. We had never seen him before. He wore in his belt an old original "Allen " revolver, such as irreverent people called a " pepper- box." Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George's was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers afterward said, " If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetch something else." And so she did. She went after a deuce of LIGIIT TRAVELING ORDER. ^^ THE "ALLEN.' u LUXURIES AND NECESSARIES. spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule ; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shot- gun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful INDUCEMENTS TO PURCHASE. weapon — the "Allen." Sometimes all its six barrels would go oft" at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it. We took two or three blankets for protection against frosty weather in the mountains. In the matter of luxuries we were modest — we took none along but some pipes and five pounds of smoking tobacco. We had two large canteens to carry water in, between stations on the Plains, and we also took with us a little shot-bag of silver coin for daily expenses in the way of breakfasts and dinners. OUR COACH 25 By eight o'clock everything was ready, and we were on the other side of the river. We jumped into the stage, the driver cracked his whip, and we bowled away and left " the States " behind us. It was a superb summer morning, and all the landscape was brilliant with sunshine. There was a freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilarating sense of emancipation from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almost made us feel that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toil- ing and slaving, had been wasted and thrown away. We were spinning along through Kansas, and in the course of an hour and a half we were fairly abroad on the great Plains. Just here the land was rolling — a grand sweep of regular elevations and depressions as far as the eye could reach — like the stately heave and swell of the ocean's bosom after a storm. And everywhere were cornfields, accenting with squares of deeper green, this limitless expanse of grassy land. But presently this sea upon dry ground was to lose its " rolling " character and stretch away for seven hundred miles as level as a floor ! Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous description — an imposing cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six handsome horses, and by the side of the driver sat the " conductor," the legitimate captain of the craft; for it was his busi- ness to take charge and care of the mails, baggage, express matter, and passen- gers. We three were the only passengers, this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside. About all the rest of the coach was full of mail bags — for we had three days' delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wall of mail matter rose up THE FACETIOUS DRIVER. 26 A NEW POST OFFICE to the roof. There was a great pile of it strapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots were full. "We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver PLEASING NEWS. said — " a little for Brigham, and Carson, and 'Frisco, but the heft of it for the Injuns, which is powerful troublesome 'thout they get plenty of truck to read." But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenance which was sug- gestive of a wink being swallowed by an earthquake, we guessed that his remark was intended to be facetious, and to mean that we would unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains and leave it to the Indians, or whosoever wanted it. "We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over the hard, level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time the coach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and unfatigued. After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles A MODERN SPHTNX. 27 further on, and we three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver and conductor. Apparently she was not a talkative woman. She would sit there in the gathering twi- light and fasten her steadfast eyes on a mosquito rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other hand till she had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him that would have jolted a cow; and after that she would sit and contemplate the corpse with tranquil satisfaction — for she never missed her mosquito ; she was a dead shot at short range. She never removed a carcase, but left them there for bait. I sat by this grim Sphynx and watched her kill thirty or forty mosquitoes — watched her, and waited for her to say something, but she never did. So I finally opened the conversation my- self. I said : " The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam." "You bet!" il What did I understand you to say, madam ?" "You bet!" Then she cheered up, and faced around and said : " Danged if I didn't begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb. I did, b' gosh. Here I've sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust'n muskeeters and wonderin' what was ailin' ye. Fust I thot you was deef and dumb, then I thot you was sick or crazy, or suthin', and then by and by I begin to reckon you was a passel of sickly fools that couldn't think of nothing to say. Wher'd ye come from?" The Sphynx was a Sphynx no more ! The fountains of her great deep were broken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and forty nights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under THE SPHYNX. 28 A SOCIABLE HEIFER. a desolating deluge of trivial gossip that left not a crag or pin^ nacle of rejoinder projecting above the tossing waste of dislo- cated grammar and decomposed pronunciation ! How we suffered, suffered, suffered ! She went on, hour after hour, till I was sorry I ever opened the mosquito ques- tion and gave her a start. She never did stop again until she got to her journey's end toward daylight ; and then she stirred us up as she was leaving the stage (for we were nodding, by that time), and said : " ISTow you git out at Cottonwood, you fellers, and lay over a couple o' days, and I'll be along some time to-night, and if I can do ye any good by edgin' in a word now and then, I'm right thar. Folks '11 tell you 't I've always ben kind o' offish and partic'lar for a gal that's raised in the woods, and I am, with the rag-tag and bob-tail, and a gal has to be, if she wants to be anything, but when people comes along which is my equals, I reckon I'm a pretty sociable heifer after all," We resolved not to " lay by at Cottonwood." OHAPTEK III. ABOUT an hour and a half before daylight we were bowl- ing along smoothly over the road — so smoothly that our cradle only rocked in a gentle, lulling way, that was grad- ually soothing us to sleep, and dulling our consciousness — when something gave away under us ! We were dimly aware of it, but indifferent to it. The coach stopped. We heard the driver and conductor talking together outside, and rum- maging for a lantern, and swearing because they could not find it — but we had no interest in whatever had happened, and it only added to our comfort to think of those people out there at work in the murky night, and we snug in our nest with the curtains drawn. But presently, by the sounds, there seemed to be an examination going on, and then the driver's voice said : " By George, the thoroughbrace is broke ! " This startled me broad awake — as an undefined sense of calamity is always apt to do. I said to myself : " Now, a thoroughbrace is probably part of a horse ; and doubtless a vital part, too, from the dismay in the driver's voice. Leg, maybe — and yet how could he break his leg waltzing along such a road as this ? No, it can't be his leg. That is impos- sible, unless he was reaching for the driver. Now, what can be the thoroughbrace of a horse, I wonder ? Well, whatever comes, I shall not air my ignorance in this crowd, anyway." Just then the conductor's face appeared at a lifted curtain, 30 ABANDONING THE MAIL-BAGS. and his lantern glared in on us and our wall of mail matter. He said : " Gents, you'll have to turn out a spell. Thoroughbrace is broke." We climbed out into a chill drizzle, and felt ever so home- less and dreary. When I found that the thing they called a "thoroughbrace" was the massive combination of belts and springs which the coach rocks itself in, I said to the driver : " I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I can remember. How did it happen ? " "Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days' mail — that's how it happened," said he. " And right here is the very direction which is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which was to be put out for the Injuns for to keep 'em quiet. It's most uncommon lucky, becuz it's so nation dark I should 'a' gone by unbeknowns if that air thoroughbrace hadn't broke." I knew that he was in labor with another of those winks of his, though I could not see his face, because he was bent down at work ; and wishing him a safe delivery, I turned to and helped the rest get out the mail-sacks. It made a great pyramid by the roadside when it was all out. When they had mended the thoroughbrace we filled the two boots again, but put no mail on top, and only half as much inside as there was before. The conductor bent all the seat-backs down, and then filled the coach just half full of mail-bags from end to end. We objected loudly to this, for it left us no seats. But the conductor was wiser than we, and said a bed was better than seats, and moreover, this plan would protect his thoroughbraces. We never wanted any seats after that. The lazy bed was infi- nitely preferable. I had many an exciting day, subsequently, lying on it reading the statutes and the dictionary, and won- dering how the characters would turn out. The conductor said he would send back a guard from the next station to take charge of the abandoned mail-bags, and we drove on. It was now just dawn ; and as we stretched our cramped SLEEPING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 31 legs full length on the mail sacks, and gazed out through the windows across the wide wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist, to where there was an expectant look in the eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze napping curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way ; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his " Hi-yi ! g'lang ! " were music ; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest, or envy, or something ; and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had found it. After breakfast, at some station whose name I have forgot- ten, we three climbed up on the seat behind the driver, and let the conductor have our bed for a nap. And by and by, when the sun made me drowsy, I lay down on my face on top of the coach, grasping the slender iron railing, and slept for an hour or more. That will give one an appreciable idea of those matchless roads. Instinct will make a sleeping man grip a fast hold of the railing when the stage jolts, but when it only swings and sways, no grip is necessary. Overland drivers and conductors used to sit in their places and sleep thirty or forty minutes at a time, on good roads, while spinning along at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour. I saw them do it, often. There was no danger about it ; a sleeping man will seize the irons in time when the coach jolts. These men were hard worked, and it was not possible for them to stay awake all the time. By and by we passed through Marysville, and over the Big Blue and Little Sandy ; thence about a mile, and entered Nebraska. About a mile further on, we came to the Big Sandy — one hundred and eighty miles from St. Joseph. As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of 32 A LONG-EAREB ANIMAL. an animal known familiarly over two thousand miles of moun- tain and desert — from Kansas clear to the Pacific Ocean — as the "jackass rabbit." He is well named. He is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from one third to twice as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size, and has the most pre- posterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature but a jackass. When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him con- spicuously ; but the break- ing of a twig will scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out straight and " streaking it " through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyes right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you where the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now and then he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious. Presently he comes down to a long, graceful "lope," and shortly he mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush, and will sit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of him, when he will get under way again. But one must shoot at this creature once, if he wishes to see him throw his heart into his heels, and do the best he knows how. He is frightened clear through, now, and he lays his long ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy indifference that is enchanting. Our party made this specimen "hump himself," as the MEDITATION. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE MODERNIZED 3b conductor said. The secretary started him with a shot from the Colt ; I commenced spitting at him with my weapon ; and all in the same instant the old " Allen's " whole broadside let go with a rat- ^\ j j ON BUSINESS. Long after tling crash, and it is not put- ting it too strong to say that the rabbit was frantic! He dropped his ears, set up his tail, and left for San Francisco at a speed which can only be described as a flash and a vanish ! he was out of sight we could hear him whiz. I do not remember where we first came across " sage- brush," but as I have been speaking of it I may as well describe it. This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled — . and venerable live oak-tree reduced to a little shrub two feet high, with its rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete, he can picture the " sage-brush " exactly. Often, on lazy af- ternoons in the mountains, I have lain on the ground with my face under a sage- bush, and entertained my- self with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were liliputian birds, and that the ants marching and countermarching about its base were liliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from Brobdignag waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him. It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite minia- 3t §gj|§p %^^^^^^^^^ AUTHOR AS GULLIVER. 34, THE EMIGRANT'S FRIEND. ture, is the " sage-brush." Its foliage is a grayish green, and gives that tint to desert and mountain. It smells like our do- mestic sage, and " sage-tea " made from it tastes like the sage- tea which all boys are so well acquainted with. The sage- brush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows right in the midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothing else in the vegetable world would try to grow, except "bunch- grass." * The sage-bushes grow from three to six or seven feet apart, all over the mountains and deserts of the Far West, clear to the borders of California. There is not a tree of any kind in the deserts, for hundreds of miles — there is no vegeta- tion at all in a regular desert, except the sage-brush and its cousin the " greasewood," which is so much like the sage- brush that the difference amounts to little. Camp-fires and hot suppers in the deserts would be impossible but for the friendly sage-brush. Its trunk is as large as a boy's wrist (and from that up to a man's arm), and its crooked branches are half as large as its trunk — all good, sound, hard wood, very like oak. When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage-brush ; and in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready for use. A hole a foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brush chopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowing coals. Then the cooking begins, and there is no smoke, and consequently no swearing. Such a fire will keep all night, with very little replenishing ; and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one around which the most impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and profoundly entertaining. Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a dis- tinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the *" Bunch-grass " grows on the bleak mountain-sides of Nevada and neighboring territories, and offers excellent feed for stock, even in the dead of winter, wherever the snow is blown aside and exposes it ; notwithstand- ing its unpromising home, bunch-grass is a better and more nutritious diet for cattle and horses than almost any other hay or grass that is known— -so &tock-men say. A NEW ARTICLE OF DIET. 35 jackass and his illegitimate child the mule. But their testi- mony to its mitritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner. Mules and donkeys and camels have appetites that anything will relieve temporarily, but nothing satisfy. In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it ; and then, after he was cK "tougX sf-te) of the farther deserts And if it was, he was not a pretty creature or respectable either, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward, and ca*i speak with con- fidence. The cayote is a long, slim sick and sorry-looking THE CAYOTE 49 Ol/K MOUSING RIDE. skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The ca- yote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friend- less. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely ! — so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful. When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, de- presses his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again — another fifty and stop again ; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no demonstration against him ; but if you do, he develops a livelier interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the 50 A DOG'S EXPERIENCES. time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time you have " drawn a bead " on him you see well enough that nothing but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where he is now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much — especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about speed. The cayote will go swing- ing gently off on that de- ceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that I will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck fur- ther to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out straighter behind, and move his fu- rious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain ! And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote, and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer ; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him mad- der and madder to see how gently the cayote glides along and never pants or sweats or ceases to smile ; and he grows still more and more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot is ; and next he notices that he PRAIRIE DOGS. A DOG'S EXPERIENCES CONTINUED. 51 is getting fagged, and that the cayote actually has to slacken speed a little to keep from running away from him — and then that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with concentrated and desperate energy. This " spurt " finds him six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is Hghting up his face, the cayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to say : " Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, bub — business is business, and it will not do for me &g^h££h.S2h^ -" " I'm a liar am I ! Ger-reat Csesar's ghost—" MR. ARKANSAS. BULLY OLD ARKANSAS. 223 " Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I wish I may die if I did. All the boys will tell you that I've always spoke well of you, and respected you more'n any man in the house. Ask Smith. Ain't it so, Smith ? Didn't I say, no longer ago than last night, that for a man that was a gentleman all the time and every way you took him, give me Arkansas ? I'll leave it to any gentleman here if them warn't the very words I used. Come, now, Mr. Arkansas, le's take a drink — le's shake hands and take a drink. Come up — every- body! It's my treat. Come up, Bill, Tom, Bob, Scotty — come up. I want you all to take a drink with me and Arkan- sas — old Arkansas, I call him — bully old Arkansas. Gimme your hand agin. Look at him, boys — just take a look at him. Thar stands the whitest man in America ! — and the man that denies it has got to fight me, that's all. Gimme that old flipper agin ! " They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord's part and unresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed by a drink, was disappointed of his prey once more. But the foolish landlord was so happy to have escaped butchery, that he went on talking when he ought to have marched himself out of danger. The consequence was that Arkansas shortly began to glower upon him dangerously, and presently said : " Lan'lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you please ? " " I was a-sayin' to Scotty that my father was up'ards of eighty year old when he died." " Was that all that you said ? " " Yes, that was all." " Didn't say nothing but that? " " No— nothing." Then an uncomfortable silence. Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on the counter. Then he meditatively scratched his left shin with his right boot, while the awkward silence con- tinued. But presently he loafed away toward the stove, 224 BOUND FOR A FIGHT. looking dissatisfied ; roughly shouldered two or three men out of a comfortable position ; occupied it himself, gave a sleeping dog a kick that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long legs and his blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back. In a little while he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he slouched back to the bar and said : " Lan'lord, what's your idea for rakin' up old personalities and blowin' about your father ? Ain't this company agreeable to you ? Ain't it ? If this company ain't agreeable to you, p'r'aps we'd better leave. Is that your idea? Is that what you're coming at ? " " Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn't thinking of such a thing. My father and my mother — " " Lan'lord, donH crowd a man ! Don't do it. If nothing'll do you but a disturbance, out with it like a man (He) — but donH rake up old bygones and fling 'em in the teeth of a passel of people that wants to be peaceable if they could git a chance. What's the matter with you this mornin', anyway ? I never see a man carry on so." " Arkansas, I reely didn't mean no harm, and I won't go on with it if it's onpleasant to you. I reckon my licker's got into my head, and what with the flood, and havin' so many to feed and look out for — " " So that's what's a-ranklin' in your heart, is it ? You want us to leave do you % There's too many on us. You want us to pack up and swim. Is that it ? Come ! " " Please be reasonable, Arkansas. Now you know that I ain't the man to — " " Are you a threatenin' me ? Are you ? By George, the man don't live that can skeer me ! Don't you try to come that game, my chicken — 'cuz I can stand a good deal, but I won't stand that. Come out from behind that bar till I clean you ! You want to drive us out, do you, you sneakin' under- handed hound ! Come out from behind that bar ! Pll learn you to bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that's forever trying to befriend you and keep you out of trouble ! " A BLOODLESS AFFRAY. 225 " Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot ! If there's got to be bloodshed — " " Do you hear that, gentlemen ? Do you hear him talk about bloodshed? So it's blood you want, is it, you ravin' desperado ! You'd made up your mind to murder somebody this mornin' — I knowed it perfectly well. I'm the man, am I? It's me you're goin' to murder, is it? But you can't do it 'thout I get one chance first, you thievin' black-hearted, white-livered son of a nigger ! Draw your weepon ! " AN ARMED ALLY. With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber over benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape. In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glass door, and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord's wife suddenly appeared in the door- +15 226 THE FLOOD SUBSIDES. way and confronted the desperado with a pair of scissors ! Her fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eye she stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. The astonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed. She backed him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then, while the wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another tongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before, perhaps ! As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause shook the house, and every man ordered " drinks for the crowd " in one and the same breath. The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was over, and the Arkansas domination broken for good. During the rest of the season of. island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state of permanent humiliation, never mix- ing in any quarrel or uttering a boast, and never resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantly leveled at him, and that man was " Arkansas." By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, but the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was no possibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was still too high for an entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next to insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc., and so we made an effort to get away. In the midst of a heavy snow-storm we embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horses after us by their halters. The Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow, with a paddle, Ballou paddled in the middle, and I sat in the stern holding the halters. When the horses lost their footing and began to swim, Ollendorff got frightened, for there was great danger that the horses would make our aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failed to land at a certain spot the current would throw us off and almost surely cast us into the main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now. Such a catastrophe would be death, in all probability, for we would be swept to sea in the " Sink " or overturned and drowned. We warned Ollendorff to keep his wits about him and handle himself care- ANOTHER DISASTER. 227 fully, but it was useless ; the moment the bow touched the bank, he made a spring and the canoe whirled upside down in CROSSING THE FLOOD. ten-foot water. Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but Ballou and I had to swim for it, encum- bered with our overcoats. But we held on to the canoe, and although we were washed down nearly to the Carson, we man- aged to push the boat ashore and make a safe landing. We were cold and water-soaked, but safe. The horses made a landing, too, but our saddles were gone, of course. We tied the animals in the sage-brush and there they had to stay for twenty-four hours. We baled out the canoe and ferried over some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more night in the inn before making another venture on our journey. The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we & A NEW START FOR CARSON. got away with our new stock of saddles and accoutrements. We mounted and started. The snow lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a road perceptible, and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see more than a hun- dred yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by the mountain ranges. The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his instinct was as sensitive as any compass, and that he could " strike a bee-line " for Carson city and never diverge from it. He said that if he were to straggle a single point out of the true line his instinct would assail him like an outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into his wake happy and content. For half an hour we poked along warily enough, but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorff shouted proudly: " I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys ! Here we are, right in somebody's tracks that will hunt the way for us without any trouble. Let's hurry up and join company with the party." So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow, and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors, for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried along, and at the end of an hour the tracks looked still newer and .fresher — but what surprised us was, that the number of travelers in advance of us seemed to steadily increase. We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at such a time and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that it must be a company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution and jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now. But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment — Ballou said they had already increased to five hundred ! Presently he stopped his horse and said : " Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been circussing round and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blind desert ! By George this is per- fectly hydraulic ! " RAPID TRAVEL BUT NO ADVANCE. 229 Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollendorff all manner of hard names — said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he " did not know as much as a logarithm ! " We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollen- ADTAXCE IK A CIRCLE. dorff and his "mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment. After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again, with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song about his "sister and his brother" and "the child in the grave with its mother," and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white oblivion. He was never heard of 230 A SAFE LEADER AT LAST THE SONGSTER. again. He no doubt got bewildered and lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became ex- hausted and dropped. Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. We hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trot- ted merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver's bump of locality. But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. We were soon left out of sight ; but it was no matter, for we had the deep ruts the wheels made for a guide. By this time it was three in the afternoon, and con- sequently it was not very long before night came — and not with a lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a cellar door, as is its habit in that country. The snow- fall was still as thick as ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us ; but all about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern the smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling and slowly disappearing wheel-tracks. Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height — three or four feet ; they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert ; each of them was a mere snow-mound, now ; in any direction that you proceeded (the same as in a well laid out orchard) you would find yourself moving down a distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds an either side of it — an avenue the customary width of a road, nice and level in its breadth, and rising at the sides in the most natural way, by reason of the mounds. But we had not thought of this. Then imagine the chilly thrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in the night, REALIZATION OF UNPLEASANT FACTS. 231 that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long ago been buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere sage-brush avenue, miles away from the road and diverg- ing further and further aAvay from it all the time. Having a cake of ice slipped down one's back is placid comfort compared to it. There was a sudden leap and stir of blood that had been asleep for an hour, and as sudden a rousing of all the drowsing activities in our minds and bodies. We were alive and awake at once — and shaking and quaking with consterna- tion, too. There was an instant halting and dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning of the road-bed. Use- less, of course ; for if a faint depression could not be discerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainly could not with one's nose nearly against it. OHAPTEE XXXII. "TTTE seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We * ▼ tested this by walking off in various directions — the regular snow-mounds and the regular avenues between them convinced each man that he had found the true road, and that the others had found only false ones. Plainly the situation was desperate. We were cold and stiff and the horses were tired. We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning. This was wise, because if we were wandering from the right road and the snow-storm continued another day our case would be the next thing to hopeless if we kept on. All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us, now, and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and so we tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that it could be done, and without any trouble — because every man in the party had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believe it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted and believed that other common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together. We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses put their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us ; and while the feathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white statuary, we pro- ceeded with the momentous experiment. We broke twigs LOST IN THE SNOW WITHOUT FIRE OR HORSES. 233 from a sage bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of our bodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready, and then, while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious suspense, Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew the pile clear out of the county ! It was the flattest failure that ever was. This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror — A FLAT FAILURE. the horses were gone ! I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my absorbing anxiety over the pistol experi- ment I had unconsciously dropped them and the released animals had walked off in the storm. It was useless to try to follow them, for their footfalls could make no sound, and one could pass within two yards of the creatures and never see them. We gave them up without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books that said horses would stay 234 VAIN ATTEMPTS FOR A FIRE by tlieir masters for protection and companionship in a distress- ful time like ours. We were miserable enough, before : we felt still more forlorn, now. Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them, and once more the Prussian shot them into annihilation. Plainly, to light a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience, and the middle of a desert at midnight in a snow-storm was not a good place or time for the acquiring of the accomplishment. We gave it up and tried the other. Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafing them together. At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled, and so were the sticks. We bitterly execrated the Indians, the hunters and the books that had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondered dis- mally what was next to be done. At this critical moment Mr. Ballon fished out four matches from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket. To have found four gold bars would have seemed poor and cheap good luck compared to this. One cannot think how good a match looks under such ciu- cum stances — or how lovable and gj gggj ij precious, and sa- credly beautiful to the eye. This time we gathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Bal- lou prepared to light the first match, there was THE LAST MATCH. „ . an amount 01 in- terest centred upon him that pages of writing could not describe. The match burned hopefully a moment, and then went out. It could not have carried more regret with it if it had been a human life. The next match simply flashed and COMPARISON OF OUR THOUGHTS. 235 died. The wind puffed the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge of success. We gathered together closer than ever, and developed a solicitude that was rapt and pain- ful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our last hope on his leg. It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a robust flame. Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bent gradually- down and every heart went with him — everybody, too, for that matter — and blood and breath stood still. The flame touched the sticks at last, took gradual hold upon them — hesitated — took a stronger hold — hesitated again — held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then gave a sort of human gasp and went out. Nobody said a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence ; even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise than the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversation began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the conviction that this was our last night with the living. I had so hoped that I was the only one who felt so. When the others calmly acknowl- edged their conviction, it sounded like the summons itself. Ollendorff said: " Brothers, let us die together. And let us go without one hard feeling towards each other. Let us forget and forgive bygones. I know that you have felt hard towards me for turn- ing over the canoe, and for knowing too much and leading you round and round in the snow — but I meant well ; forgive me. I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings against Mr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a thing I do not know what, but no doubt a thing considered disgraceful and unbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind and has hurt me a great deal — but let it go ; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all my heart, and — " Poor Ollendorff broke down and the tears came. He was not alone, for I was crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou. Ollendorff got his voice again and forgave me for things I had done and said. Then he got out his bottle of whisky and said that whether he lived or died he would never touch another 236 WE MOURN OVER OUR EVIL LIVES. drop. He said he had given up all hope of life, and although ill-prepared, was ready to submit humbly to his fate ; that he wished he could be spared a little longer, not for any selfish reason, but to make a thorough reform in his character, and by devoting himself to helping the poor, nursing the sick, and pleading with the people to guard themselves against the evils of intemperance, make his life a beneficent example to the young, and lay it down at last with the precious reflection that it had not been lived in vain. He ended by saying that his reform should begin at this moment, even here in the presence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed wherein to prosecute it to men's help and benefit — and with that he threw away the bottle of whisky. Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he could not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards that had solaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable. He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling with cards in any way was y ^ immoral and injurious, and no man could be wholly pure and blemishless without eschew- ing them. " And therefore," continued he, "in doing this act I already feel more in sympathy with that spiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform." These rolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could have done, and the old man sobbed with a mournful- ness not unmingled with satisfaction. My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I know that the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere. We were all sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the pres- ence of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doin^ it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice DISCARDED VICES. APPARENTLY THE END. 237 and one that had ridden me like a tyrant all my days. While I yet talked, the thought of the good I might have done in the world and the still greater good I might now do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide me if I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the tears came again. We put our arms about each other's necks and awaited the warning drowsiness that pre- cedes death by freezing. It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a last farewell. A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding senses, while the snow-flakes wove a wind- ing sheet about my conquered body. Oblivion came. The battle of life was done. OHAPTEE XXXIII. I DO not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed an age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. I shuddered. The thought flitted through my brain, " this is death — this is the hereafter." Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with bitterness : "Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?" It was Ballou — at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture, with Ballou's voice. I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still saddled and bridled horses ! An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word. We really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not " do the subject justice," the whole situation was so painfully ridiculous and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know where to commence anyhow. The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned ; well-nigh dissipated, indeed. We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and sullen ; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry at everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and in unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them, and sought shelter in the station. I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and FRUITS OF OUR REFORM. 239 absurd adventure. It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it. We actually went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm, forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn. For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust. The mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses had deserted us. Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of a minute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed all our confessions and lamentations. After breakfast we felt . better, and the zest of life soon came back. The world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever. Presently an uneasiness came over me — grew upon me — assailed me without ceasing. Alas, my regeneration was not complete — I wanted to smoke ! I re- sisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak. I wan- dered away alone and wrestled with myself an hour. I recalled my promises of reform and preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively. But it was all vain, I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-drifts hunt- ing for my pipe. I discovered it after a considerable search, and crept away to hide myself and enjoy it. I remained behind the barn a good while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truer comrades should catch me in my degradation. At last I lit the pipe, and no human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then. I was ashamed of being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I felt that perhaps the further side of the barn would be some- what safer, and so I turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorff turned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat unconscious Ballou deep in a game of " solitaire " with the old greasy cards ! Absurdity could go no farther. We shook hands and agreed to say no more about " reform " and " examples to the rising generation." The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six- Mile Desert. If we had approached it half an hour earlier 240 CARSON, AND WHAT WE SAW THERE. the night before, we must have heard men shouting there and firing pistols ; for they were expecting some sheep drovers IT WAS THUS WE MET. and their flocks and knew that they would infallibly get lost and wander out of reach of help unless guided by sounds. While we remained at the station, three of the drovers arrived, nearly exhausted with their wanderings, but two others of their party were never heard of afterward. We reached Carson in due time, and took a rest. This rest, together with preparations for the journey to Esmeralda, kept us there a week, and the delay gave us the opportunity to be present at the trial of the great land-slide case of Hyde vs. Morgan — an episode which is famous in Nevada to this day. After a word or two of necessary explanation, I will set down the history of this singular affair just as it transpired. CHAPTEE XXXIT. THE mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and "Washoe Valleys — very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten and soften, the disastrous land-slides commence. The reader cannot know what a land-slide is, unless he has lived in that country and seen the whole side of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited down in the valley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the mountain's front to keep the circum- stance fresh in his memory all the years that he may go on }i>i ing within seventy miles of that place. General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorial officers, to be United States Attorney. Ha considered himself a lawyer of parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it — partly for the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary was Territo- rially meagre (which is a strong expression). Now the older citizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with a calm, benevolent compassion, as long as it keeps out of the way — when it gets in the way they snub it. Some- times this latter takes the shape of a practical joke. One morning Dick Hyde rode furiously up to General Buncombe's door in Carson city and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie his horse. He seemed much excited. He told the General that he wanted him to conduct a suit for him and would pay him five hundred dollars if he achieved a victory. And then, with violent gestures and a world of profanity, he poured out his griefs. He said it was pretty 16f 24:2 HOW DICK HYDE LOS'i HIS RANCH. well known that for some years lie had been farming (or ranching as the more customary term is) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing of it, and furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in the edge of the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above it on the mountain side. And now the trouble was, that one of those hated and dreaded land-slides had come and slid Morgan's ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns and everything down on top of his ranch and exactly covered up every single vestige of his property, to a depth of about thirty-eight feet. Morgan was in possession and re- fused to vacate the premises — s aid was occupying own cabin and not interfering with any- body else's — and said the cabin was stand- ing on the same dirt and same ranch it had always stood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate. taking possession. " And when I reminded him," said Hyde, weeping, " that it was on top of my ranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal meanness to ask me why didn't I stay on my ranch and hold possession when I see him a-coming ! Why didn't I stay on it, the blathering lunatic— by George, when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like the whole world was a-ripping and a-tearing down that mountain side — splinters, and cord-wood, thunder and lightning, hail and snow, odds and ends of hay stacks, HOW MORGAN OVERTOOK HIM. 243 and awful clouds of dust ! — trees going end over end in the air, rocks as big as a house jumping 'bout a thousand feet high and busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out and a-coming head on with their tails hanging out be- tween their teeth ! — and in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan on his gate-post, a-wonder- ing why I didn't stay and hold possession / Laws bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out'n the county in three jumps exactly. " But what grinds me is that that Morgan hangs on there and won't move off 'n that ranch — says it's his'n and he's going to keep it — likes it better'n he did when it was higher up the hill. Mad ! Well, I've been so mad for two days I couldn't find my way to town — been wandering around in the brush in a starving condition — got anything here to drink, General ? But I'm here now, and I'm a-going to law. You hear me ! " Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man's feelings so outraged as were the General's. He said he had never heard of such high-handed conduct in all his life as this Morgan's. And he said there was no use in going to law — Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he was — nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it, and no lawyer would take his case and no judge listen to it. Hyde said that right there was where he was mistaken — everybody in town sustained Morgan ; Hal Bray ton, a very smart lawyer, had taken his case ; the courts being in vacation, it was to be tried before a referee, and ex-Governor Hoop had already been appointed to that office and would open his court in a large public hall near the hotel at two that afternoon. The General was amazed. He said he had suspected be- fore that the people of that Territory were fools, and now he knew it. But he said rest easy, rest easy and collect the wit- nesses, for the victory was just as certain as if the conflict were already over. Hyde wiped away his tears and left. At two in the afternoon referee Hoop's Court opened, and Eoop appeared throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearing upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his fellow-conspirators had misgiv- 2U PEEP A RATION FOR THE TRIAL. ings that maybe he had not comprehended, after all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness prevailed, for at the slightest noise the judge uttered sternly the command : " Order in the Court ! " And the sheriffs promptly echoed it. Presently the General elbowed his way through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books, and on his ears fell an order from the judge which was the first respectful recognition of his high official dignity that had ever saluted them, and it trickled pleasantly through his whole system : "Way for the United States Attorney ! " The witnesses were called — legislators, high government GREAT EFFORT. officers, ranchmen, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three fourths of them were called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably went in favor of the plain- GENERAL BUNCOMBE IN COURT. 24:5 tiff Hyde. Each new witness only added new testimony to the absurdity of a man's claiming to own another man's prop- erty because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the Morgan lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make sin- gularly weak ones — they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the General, with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned effort; he pounded the. table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared, and howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm, sta- tistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up with a grand war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal justice ! [Applause.] When the General sat down, he did it with the convic- tion that if there was anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan's case was killed. Ex-Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking, and the still audience waited for his decision. Then he got up and stood erect, with bended head, and thought again. Then he walked the floor with long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still the audience waited. At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, and began, impressively : " Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this day. This is no ordinary case. On the contrary it is plain that it is the most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide. Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have perceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. I have listened also to the remarks of counsel, with high interest — and especially will I commend the masterly and irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who repre- sents the plaintiff. But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere human testimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity, to influence us at a moment so solemn as this. Gentlemen, it ill becomes us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven. It is plain to me that 246 A VERDICT WITHOUT APPEAL. Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen tit to move this defendant's ranch for a purpose. We are but creatures, and we must submit. If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in this marked and wonderful manner ; and if Heaven, dissatisfied with the position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to remove it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its owner, it ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of the act or inquire into the reasons that prompted it. No — Heaven created the ranches and it is Heaven's prerogative to rearrange them, to experiment with them, to shift them around at its pleasure. REARRANGING AND SHIFTING. It is for us to submit, without repining. I warn yon that this thing which has happened is a thing with which the sacri- legious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle. Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff A SERIOUS AFTERTHOUGHT. 247 Richard Hyde, has been deprived of his ranch by the visita- tion of God ! And from this decision there is no appeal." Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and plunged out of the court-room frantic with indignation. He pronounced Hoop to be a miraculous fool, an inspired idiot. In all good faith he returned at night and remonstrated with Hoop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk the floor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out some sort of modification of the verdict. Roop yielded at last and got up to walk. He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit up happily and he told Buncombe it had oc- curred to him that the ranch underneath the new Morgan ranch still belonged to Hyde, that his title to the ground was just as good as it had ever been, and therefore he was of opinion that Hyde had a right to dig it out from under there and — The General never waited to hear the end of it. He was always an impatient and irascible man, that way. At the end of two months the fact that he had been played upon with a joke had managed to bore itself, like another Hoosac Tunnel, through the solid adamant of his understanding. OHAPTEE XXXV. "TTT^HE^N" we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had ▼ V an addition to the company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor's brother. He had a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is a combination which gives immortality to conversation. Capt. John never suffered the talk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of the journey. In addition to his conversa- tional powers, he had one or two other endowments of a marked character. One was a singular "handiness" about doing anything and everything, from laying out a railroad or organizing a political party, down to sewing on buttons, shoe- ing a horse, or setting a broken leg, or a hen. Another was a spirit of accommodation that prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and perplexities of anybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and all times, and dispose of them with admirable facility and alacrity— hence he always managed to find vacant beds in crowded inns, and plenty to eat in the emptiest larders. And finally, wherever he met a man, woman or child, in camp, inn or desert, he either knew such parties personally or had been acquainted with a relative of the same. Such another traveling comrade was never seen before. I cannot forbear giving a specimen of the way in which he overcame difficulties. On the second day out, we arrived, very tired and hungry, at a poor little inn in the desert, and were told that the house was full, no provisions on hand, and neither hay nor barley to spare for the horses — we must move on. The rest of us wanted to hurry on while it A MAN WITH BAD TRAITS. 249 was jet light, but Capt. John insisted on stopping awhile. We dismounted and entered. There was no welcome for us on any face. Capt. John began his blandishments, and within twenty minutes he had accomplished the following things, viz. : found old acquaintances in three teamsters ; discovered that he used to go to school with the landlord's mother; recognized his wife as a lady whose life he had saved once in California, by stopping her runaway horse ; mended a child's broken toy and won the favor of its mother, a guest of the inn; helped the hostler bleed a horse, and prescribed for another horse that had the " heaves " ; treated the entire party three times at the landlord's bar ; produced a later paper than anybody had seen for a week and sat himself down to read the news to a deeply interested audience. The result, summed up, was as follows : The hostler found plenty of feed for our horses ; we had a trout supper, an exceedingly sociable time after it, good beds to sleep in, and a surprising breakfast in the morning — and when we left, we left lamented by all ! Capt. WE LEFT LAMENTED. John had some bad traits, but he had some uncommonly valu- able ones to offset them with. Esmeralda was in many respects another Humboldt, but in a little more forward state. The claims we had been paying assessments on were entirely worthless, and we threw them away. The principal one cropped out of the top of a knoll that was fourteen feet high, and the inspired Board of 250 BASE OPERATIONS LOOKED INTO. Directors were running a tunnel under that knoll to strike the ledge. The tunnel would have to be seventy feet long, and would then strike the ledge at the same depth that a shaft twelve feet deep would have reached ! The Board were living on the " assessments." [1ST. B. — This hint comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners ; they have already learned all about this neat trick by experience.] The Board had no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren of silver as a curbstone. This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend's tunnel. He had paid assessments on a mine called the " Daley " till he was well-nigh penniless. Finally an assessment was levied to run a tunnel two hundred and fifty feet on the Daley, and Townsend went up on the hill to look into matters. He found the Daley cropping out of the apex PICTURE OF TOWNSEND'S TUNNEL. ,of an exceedingly sharp-pointed peak, and a couple of men up there " facing " the proposed tunnel. Townsend made a cat culation. Then he said to the men : u So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two hundred and fifty feet to strike this ledge I w "Yes, sir." BOTTOM TOUCHED AT LAST. 251 " Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive and arduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man ? " "Why no— how is that?" " Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to side; and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of your tunnel on trestle-work ! " The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous. We took up various claims, and commenced shafts and tunnels on them, but never finished any of them. We had to do a certain amount of work on each to "hold" it, else other parties could seize our property after the expiration of ten days. We were always hunting up new claims and doing a little work on them and then waiting for a buyer — who never came. We never found any ore that would yield more than fifty dollars a ton ; and as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for working ore and extracting the silver, our pocket- money melted steadily away and none returned to take its place. We lived in a little cabin and cooked for ourselves ; and altogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one — for we never ceased to expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some day. At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be borrowed on the best security at less than eight per cent a month (I being without the security, too), I aban- doned mining and went to milling. That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz mill, at ten dollars a week and board. CHAPTEE XXXVI. I HAD already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore ; and now I learned that the burrowing was only half the work ; and that to get the silver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half of it. We had to turn out at six in the morning and keep at it till dark. This mill was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam. Six tall, upright rods of iron, as large as a man's ankle, and heavily shod with a mass of iron and steel at their lower ends, were framed together like a gate, and these rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in an iron box called a " battery." Each of these rods or stamps weighed six hundred pounds. One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the battery. The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulver- ized the rock to powder, and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it to a creamy paste. The minutest particles were driven through a fine wire screen which fitted close around the battery, and were washed into great tubs warmed by super-heated steam — amalgamating pans, they are called. The mass of pulp in the pans was kept constantly stirred up by revolving "mullers." A quantity of quicksilver was kept always in the battery, and this seized some of the liberated gold and silver particles and held on to them; quick- silver was shaken in a fine shower into the pans, also, about every half hour, through a buckskin sack. Quantities of AT WORK IN A QUARTZ MILL, 253 coarse salt and sulphate of copper were added, from time to time to assist the amalgamation by destroying base metals which coated the gold and silver and would not let it unite with the quicksilver. All these tiresome things we had to QUARTZ MILL IN NEVADA. attend to constantly. Streams of dirty water flowed always from the pans and were carried off in broad wooden troughs to the ravine. One would not suppose that atoms of gold and silver would float on top of six inches of water, but they did ; and in order to catch them, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs, and little obstructing "riffles" charged with quick- silver were placed here and there across the troughs also. These riffles had to be cleaned and the blankets washed out every evening, to get their precious accumulations — and after all this eternity of trouble one third of the silver and gold in a ton of rock would find its way to the end of the troughs in the ravine at last and have to be worked over again some day. There is nothing so aggravating as silver milling. There never was any idle time in that mill. There was always something to do. It is a pity that Adam could not have gone 2.54 WASHING BLANKETS AND "SCREENING TAILINGS, straight out of Eden into a quartz mill, in order to understand the full force of his doom to " earn his bread by the sweat of his brow." Every now and then, during the day, we had to scoop some pulp out of the pans, and tediously "wash" it in a horn spoon — wash it little by little over the edge till at last nothing was left but some little dull globules of quicksilver in the bottom. If they were soft and yielding, the pan needed some salt or some sulphate of copper or some other chemical rubbish to assist digestion ; if they were crisp to the touch and would retain a dint, they were freighted with all the silver and gold they could seize and hold, and consequently the pans needed a fresh charge of quicksilver. When there was noth- ing else to do, one could always " screen tailings." That is to say, he could shovel up the dried sand that had washed down to the ravine through the troughs and dash it against an up- right wire screen to free it from pebbles and prepare it for ANOTHER PROCESS OF AMALGAMATION. working over. The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and this included changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a great diversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of the methods employed, involved. MAKING SILVER BRICKS. 255 the principle of milling ore without " screening the tailings." Of all recreations in the world, screening tailings on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the most undesirable. At the end of the week the machinery was stopped and we " cleaned up." That is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and washed the mud patiently away till nothing was left but the long accumulating mass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures. This we made into heavy, compact snow-balls, and piled them up in a bright, luxurious heap for inspection. Making these snow-balls cost me a fine gold ring — that and ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the ring with the same facility with which water sat- urates a sponge — separated its particles and the ring crumbled to pieces. We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe leading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat. The quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail, and the water turned it into good wholesome quicksilver again. Quicksilver is veiy costly, and they never waste it. On opening the retort, there was our week's work — a lump of pure white, frosty looking silver, twice as large as a man's head. Perhaps a fifth of the mass was gold, but the color of it did not show — would not have shown if two thirds of it had been gold. We melted it up and made a solid brick of it by pouring it into an iron brick-mould. By such a tedious and laborious process were silver bricks obtained. This mill was but one of many others in operation at the time. The first one in Nevada was built at Egan Can- yon and was a small insignificant affair and compared most unfavorably with some of the immense establishments after- wards located at Virginia City and elsewhere. From our bricks a little corner was chipped off for the " fire-assay" — a method used to determine the proportions of gold, silver and base metals in the mass. This is an interest- ing process. The chip is hammered out as thin as paper and weighed on scales so fine and sensitive that if you weigh a 256 "FIRE-ASSAY" PROCESS. two-inch scrap of paper on them and then write your name on the paper with a course, soft pencil and weigh it again, the TIEST QUARTZ MILL IN NEVADA. scales will take marked notice of the addition. Then a little lead (also weighed) is rolled up with the flake of silver and the two are melted at a great heat in a small vessel called a cupel, made by compressing bone ashes into a cup-shape in a steel mold. The base metals oxydize and are absorbed with the lead into the pores of the cupel. A button or globule of perfectly pure gold and silver is left behind, and by weighing it and noting the loss, the assayer knows the proportion of base metal the brick contains. He has to separate the gold from the silver now. The button is hammered out flat and thin, put in the furnace and kept some time at a red heat ; after cooling it off it is rolled up like a quill and heated in a glass vessel containing nitric acid ; the acid dissolves the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready to be weighed on its own merits. ASSAYING AS A BUSINESS. 257 Then salt water is poured into the vessel containing the dis- solved silver and the silver returns to palpable form again and sinks to the bottom. Nothing now remains but to weigh it ; then the proportions of the several metals contained in the brick are known, and the assayer stamps the value of the brick upon its surface. The sagacious reader will know now, without being told, that the speculative miner, in getting a "lire-assay" made of a piece of rock from his mine (to help him sell the same), was not in the habit of picking out the least valuable fragment of rock on his dump-pile, but quite the contrary. I have seen men hunt over a pile of nearly worthless quartz for an hour, and at last find a little piece as large as a filbert, which was rich in gold and silver — and this was reserved for a fire-assay ! Of course the fire-assay would demonstrate that a ton of such rock would yield hundreds of dollars — and on such as- says many an utterly worth- less mine was sold. Assaying was a good business, and so some men engaged in it, occasionally, who were not strictly sci- entific and capable. One assayer got such rich results out of all specimens brought to him that in time he acquired almost a monopoly of the business. But like all men who achieve success, he became an object of envy and suspicion. The other assayers entered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizens into the secret in order to show that they meant fairly. Then they broke a little fragment off a carpenter's grindstone and got a stranger to take it to the popular scientist and get it assayed. 17f A SLICE OF RICH ORE. 25S A STRIKE FOR HIGHER WAGES. Iii the course of an hour the result came — whereby it ap- peared that a ton of that rock would yield $1,284.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold ! Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and the popular assayer left town " between two days." I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling business one week. I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance in my wages; that I liked quartz milling, indeed was infatuated with it; that I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in so short a time ; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope to intellectual activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, and nothing so stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion and washing blankets — still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary. He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round sum. How much did I want ? I said about four hundred thousand dollars a month, and board, was about all I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times. I was ordered off the premises ! And yet, when I look back to those days and call to mind the exceeding hardness of the labor I performed in that mill, I only regret that I did not ask him seven hundred thousand. Shortly after this I began to grow crazy, along with the rest of the population, about the mysterious and wonderful "cement mine," and to make preparations to take advantage of any opportunity that might offer to go and helr> hunt for it. CHAPTER XXXYII. IT was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellous Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every now and then it would be reported that Mr. W. had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead of night, in disguise, and then we would have a wild excitement — because he must be steering for his secret mine, and now was the time to follow him. In less than three hours after daylight all the horses and mules and donkeys in the vicinity would be bought, hired or stolen, and half the community would be off for the mountains, following in the wake of Whiteman. But W. would drift about through the mountain gorges for days together, in a purposeless sort of way, until the provisions of the miners ran out, and they would have to go back home. I have known it reported at eleven at night, in a large mining camp, that White- man had just passed through, and in two hours the streets, so quiet before, would be swarming wrth men and animals. Every individual would be trying to be very secret, but yet venturing to whisper to just one neighbor that W. had passed through. And long before daylight — this in the dead of Win- ter — the stampede would be complete, the camp deserted, and the whole population gone chasing after W. The tradition was that in the early immigration, more than twenty years ago, three young Germans, brothers, who had survived an Indian massacre on the Plains, wandered on foot through the deserts, avoiding all trails and roads, and simply holding a westerly direction and hoping to find California before they starved, or died of fatigue. And in a gorge in the mountains they sat down to rest one day, when one of them 260 THE WONDERFUL CEMENT MINE noticed a curious vein of cement running along the ground, shot full of lumps of dull yellow metal. They saw that it was gold, and that here was a fortune to be acquired in a single day. The vein was about as wide as a curbstone, and fully two thirds of it was pure gold. Every pound of the wonderful cement was worth well-nigh $200. Each of the brothers loaded him- self with aooui twenty-five pounds of it, and then they covered up all traces of the vein, made a rude drawing of the locality and the prin- cipal landmarks in the vicin ity, and started westward again. But troubles thick- ened about them. In their gig wanderings one brother fell and broke his leg, and the others were obliged to fj^iy go on and leave him to die r in the wilderness. Another, worn out and starving, gave up by and by, and laid down to die, but after two or three weeks of incredible hard- ships, the third reached the settlements of California ex- hausted, sick, and his mind deranged by his sufferings. He had thrown away all his cement but a few fragments, but these were sufficient to set everybody wild with excitement. However, he had had enough of the cement country, and nothing could induce him to lead a party thither. He was entirely content to work on a farm for wages. But he gave "Whiteman his map, and described the cement region as well as he could, and thus THE SAVED BROTHER. A SECRET EXPEDITION. 261 transferred th«> curse to that gentleman — for when I had my one accidental glimpse of Mr. W. in Esmeralda he had been hunting for the lost mine, in hunger and thirst, poverty and sickness, for twelve or thirteen years. Some people believed he had found it, but most people believed he had not. I saw a piece of cement as large as my fist which was said to have been given to Whiteman by the young German, and it was of a seductive nature. Lumps of virgin gold were as thick in it as raisins in a slice of fruit cake. The privilege of working such a mine one week would be sufficient for a man of reason- able desires. A new partner of ours, a Mr. Higbie, knew Whiteman well by sight, and a friend of ours, a Mr. Van Dorn, was well ac- quainted with him, and not only that, but had Whiteman's promise that he should have a private hint in time to enable him to join the next cement expedition. Yan Dorn had prom- ised to extend the hint to us. One evening Higbie came in greatly excited, and said he felt certain he had recognized Whiteman, up town, disguised and in a pretended state of in- toxication. In a little while Yan Dorn arrived and confirmed the news ; and so we gathered in our cabin and with heads close together arranged our plans in impressive whispers. We were to leave town quietly, after midnight, in two or three small parties, so as not to attract attention, and meet at dawn on the " divide " overlooking Mono Lake, eight or nine miles distant. We were to make no noise after start- ing, and not speak above a whisper under any circumstances. It was believed that for once Whiteman's presence was un- known in the town and his expedition unsuspected. Our conclave broke up at nine o'clock, and we set about our preparations diligently and with profound secrecy. At eleven o'clock we saddled our horses, hitched them with their long riatas (or lassos), and then brought out a side of bacon, a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar, a hundred pounds of flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and some few other necessary articles. All these things were " packed " on the back of a led horse — and whoever has not been 262 A NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE. taught, by a Spanish adept, to pack an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness. That is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect. He put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property on it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under it, " every which way," taking a hitch in it every now and then, and occasionally surging back on it till the horse's sides sunk in and he gasped for breath — but every time the lashings grew tight in one place they loosened in another. We never did get the load tight all over, but we got it so that it would do, after a fashion, and then we started, in single file, close order, and without a word. It was a dark night. We kept the middle of the road, and proceeded in a slow walk past the rows of cabins, and whenever a miner came to his door I trembled for fear the light would shine on us and ex- cite curiosity. But nothing happened. We began the long winding ascent of the canyon, toward the " divide," and pres- ently the cabins began to grow infrequent, and the intervals between them wider and wider, and then I began to breathe tolerably freely and feel less like a thief and a murderer. I was in the rear, leading the pack horse. As the ascent grew steeper he grew proportionately less satisfied with his cargo, and began to pull back on his riata occasionally and delay progress. My comrades were passing out of sight in the gloom. I was getting anxious. I coaxed and bullied the pack horse till I presently got him into a trot, and then the tin cups and pans strung about his person frightened him and he ran. His riata was wound around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went by he dragged me from my horse and the two animals traveled briskly on without me. But I was not alone — the loosened cargo tumbled overboard from the pack horse and fell close to me. It was abreast of almost the last cabin. A miner came out and said : "Hello!" I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so very dark in the shadow of the mountain. So I lay still. Another head appeared in the light of the cabin IN A DISTKESSED POSITION. 263 door, and presently the two men walked toward me. They stepped within ten steps of me, and one said : "'St! Listen." ON A SECRET EXPEDITION. I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping justice with a price on my head. Then the miners appeared to sit down on a boulder, though I could not set? them distinctly enough to be very sure what they did. Oie said : " I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything. It seemed to be about there — " A stone whizzed by my head. I flattened myself out in the dust like a postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little he would probably hear another noise. In my heart, now, I execrated secret expeditions. I promised myself that this should be my last, though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins. Then one of the men said : " I'll tell you what ! Welch knew what he was talking about 26± A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. when be said he saw Whiteman to-day. I heard horses — that was the noise. I am going down to "Welch's, right away." They left and I was glad. I did not care whither they went, so they went. I was willing they should visit Welch, and the sooner the better. As soon as they closed their cabin door my comrades emerged from the gloom ; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coast again. We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, and as day broke we reached the " divide " and joined Yan Dorn. Then we jour- neyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we halted to cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry. Three hours later the rest of the population filed over the " divide " in a long procession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the Lake ! Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but at least one thing was certain — the secret was out and Whiteman would not enter upon a search for the cement mine this time. We were filled with chagrin. We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and enjoy a week's holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it is sometimes called, and sometimes the " Dead Sea of California." It is one of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it is hardly ever men- tioned in print and very seldom visited, because it lies away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get at that only men content to endure the roughest life will con- sent to take upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. On the morning of our second day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild spot on the borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water entered it from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp. We hired a large boat and two shot-guns from a lonely ranchman who lived some ten miles further on, and made ready for com- fort and recreation. We soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its peculiarities. CHAPTEE XXXVIII. MONO LAKE lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose sum- mits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, silent, sailless sea — this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth — is little graced with the picturesque. It. is an unpretending expanse of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes, the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has seized upon and occupied. The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong with alkali that if you only dip the most hope- lessly soiled garment into them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it had been through the ablest of washerwomen's hands. "While we camped there our laundry work was easy. We tied the week's washing astern of our boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all to the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a rub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high. This water is not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. We had a valuable dog. He had raw places on him. He had more raw places on him than sound ones. He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw. He jumped overboard one day to get away from the flies. But it was bad 266 VERY HARD ON OUR DOG. judgment. In his condition, it would have been just as com- fortable to jump into the fire. The alkali water nipped him in all the raw places simultaneously, and he struck out for the shore with consider- able interest. He yelped and barked and howled as he went — and by the time he got to the shore there was no bark to him — for he had barked the bark all out of his inside, and the alkali water had cleaned the bark RATHER SOAPY. ,, ™ , . J . , all on his outside, and he probably wished he had never embarked in any such enterprise. He ran round and round in a circle, and pawed A BARK UNDER FULL SAIL. the earth and clawed the air, and threw double somersaults, sometimes backward and sometimes forward, in the most NATURE'S WONDERFUL PROVISIONS. 267 extraordinary manner. He was not a demonstrative dog, as a general thing, but rather of a grave and serious turn of mind, and I never saw him take so much interest in anything before. He finally struck out over the mountains, at a gait which we estimated at about two hundred and fifty miles an hour, and he is going yet. This was about nine years ago. We look for what is left of him along here every day. A white man cannot drink the water of Mono Lake, for it is nearly pure lye. It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes, though. It is not improbable, for they are among the purest liars I ever saw. [There will be no ad- ditional charge for this joke, except to parties requiring an explanation of it. This joke has received high commendation from some of the ablest minds of the age.] There are no fish in Mono Lake — no frogs, no snakes, no polliwigs — nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions of wild ducks and sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing exists under the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one half an inch long, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides. If you dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen thousand of these. They give to the water a sort of grayish-white appearance. Then there is a fly, which looks something like our house fly. These settle on the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore — and any time, you can see there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide, and this belt extends clear around the lake — a belt of flies one hundred miles long. If you throw a stone among them, they swarm up so thick that they look dense, like a cloud. You can hold them under water as long as you please — they do not mind it — they are only proud of it. When you let them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report, and walk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially with a view to affording instructive enter- tainment to man in that particular way. Providence leaves nothing to go by chance. All things have their uses and their part and proper place in Nature's economy : the ducks eat the flies — the flies eat the worms — the Indians eat all three — the 26S A FREE HOTEL BUT NO CLERK. wild cats eat the Indians — the white folks eat the wild cats-~ and thus all things are lovely. Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean — and between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains — yet thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear their young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas. And in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature's wisdom. The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated over with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or anything that would burn ; and sea-gulls' eggs being entirely useless to anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there, and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I have made during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boiling spring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome. So, in that island A MODEL BOARDING-HOUSE. you get your board and washing free of charge — and if nature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who was crusty and disobliging, and didn't know anything about the time tables, or the railroad routes — or — anything — and was proud of it — I would not wish for a more desirable boarding-house. Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a stream of any hind flows out of it. It neither FUNNY INCIDENTS, BUT A LITTLE OVERDRAWN. 269 rises nor falls, apparently, and what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery. There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake — and these are, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next. More than once (in Esme- ralda) I have seen a perfectly blistering morning open up with the thermometer at ninety degrees at eight o'clock, and seen the snow fall fourteen inches deep and that same identical thermometer go down to forty-four degrees under shelter, before nine o'clock at night. Under favorable circumstances it snows at least once in every single month in the year, in the little town of Mono. So uncertain is the climate in Summer that a lady who goes our visiting cannot hope to be prepared for all emergencies uniess she takes her fan under one arm and her snow shoes under tne other. When they have a Fourth of July processiou it generally snows on them, and they do say that as a general thing when a man calls for a brandy toddy there, the bar keeper chops it off with a hatchet and wraps it up in a paper, like maple sugar. And it is further reported that the old soakers haven't any teeth — wore them out eating gin cocktails and brandy punches. I do not endorse that state- ment — I simply give it for what it is worth — and it is worth — well, I should say, millions, to any man who can believe it without straining himself. But I do endorse the snow on the Fourth of July — because I know that to be true. CHAPTER XXXIX. ABOUT seven o'clock one blistering hot morning — for it was now dead summer time — Higbie and I took the boat and started on a voyage of discovery to the two islands. "We had often longed to do this, bnt had been deterred by the fear of storms ; for they were frequent, and severe enough to capsize an ordinary row-boat like ours without great difficulty — and once capsized, death would ensue in spite of the bravest swimming, for that venomous water would eat a man's eyes out like fire, and burn him out inside, too, if he shipped a sea. It was called twelve miles, straight out to the islands — a long pull and a warm one — but the morning was so quiet and sunny, and the lake so smooth and glassy and dead, that we could not resist the temptation. So we filled two large tin canteens with water (since we were not acquainted with the locality of the spring said to exist on the large island), and started. Higbie's brawny muscles gave the boat good speed, but by the time we reached our destination we judged that we had pulled nearer fifteen miles than twelve. We landed on the big island and went ashore. We tried the water in the canteens, now, and found that the sun had spoiled it ; it was so brackish that we could not drink it ; so we poured it out and began a search for the spring — for thirst augments fast as soon as it is apparent that one has no means at hand of quenching it. The island was a long, moderately high hill of ashes — nothing but gray ashes and pumice-stone, in which we sunk to our knees at every step — and all around AN EXCURSION ON THE ISLAND. 271 the top was a forbidding wall of scorched and blasted rocks. When we reached the top and got within the wall, we found simply a shallow, far-reaching basin, carpeted with ashes, and here and there a patch of fine sand. In places, picturesque jets of steam shot up out of crevices, giving evidence that although this ancient crater had gone out of active business, there was still some fire left in its furnaces. Close to one of these jets of steam stood the only tree on the island — a small pine of most graceful shape and most faultless symmetry ; its color was a brilliant green, for the steam drifted unceasingly through its branches and kept them always moist. It con- trasted strangely enough, did this vigorous and beautiful outcast, with its dead and dismal surroundings. It was like a cheerful spirit in a mourn- ing household. We hunted for the spring every- where, traversing the full length of the island (two or three miles), and crossing it twice — climbing ash-hills patiently, and then sliding down the other side in a sitting posture, plowing up smoth- ering volumes of gray dust. But we found nothing but solitude, ashes and a heart - breaking silence. Finally we noticed that the wind had risen, and wo forgot our thirst in a solicitude of greater importance ; for, the lake being quiet, we had not taken pains about secur- ing the boat. We hurried back to a point overlooking our LIFE AMID DEATH. 272 OUR BOAT ADRIFT ON THE LAKE. landing place, and then — bnt mere words cannot describe our dismay — the boat was gone ! The chances were that there was not another boat on the entire lake. The situa- tion was not comfortable — in truth, to speak plainly, it was frightful. We were prisoners on a desolate island, in aggra- vating proximity to friends who were for the present help- less to aid us ; and what was still more uncomfortable was the reflection that we had neither food nor water. But pres- ently we sighted the boat. It was drifting along, leisurely, about fifty yards from shore, tossing in a foamy sea. It drifted, and continued to drift, but at the same safe dis- tance from land, and we walked along abreast it and waited for fortune to favor us. At the end of an hour it approached a jutting cape, and Higbie ran ahead and posted himself on the utmost verge and prepared for the assault. If we failed there, there was no hope for us. It was driving gradu- ally shoreward all the time, now ; but whether it was driving fast enough to make the connection or not was the momen- tous question. When it got within thirty steps of Higbie I was so excited that I fancied I could hear my own heart beat. When, a little later, it dragged slowly along and seemed about to go by, only one little yard out of reach, it seemed as if my heart stood still ; and when it was exactly abreast him and began to widen away, and he still standing like a watching statue, I knew my heart did stop. But when he gave a great spring, the next instant, and lit fairly in the stern, I discharged a war-whoop that woke the solitudes ! But it dulled my enthusiasm, presently, when he told me he had not been caring whether the boat came within jumping distance or not, so that it passed within eight or ten yards of him, for he had made up his mind to shut his eyes and mouth and swim that trifling distance. Imbecile that I was, I had not thought of that. It was only a long swim that could be fatal. The sea was running high and the storm increasing. It was growing late, too — three or four in the afternoon. Whether to venture toward the mainland or not, was a ques- tion of some moment. But we were so distressed by thirst BILLOWS OF SOAP SUDS 273 that we decided to try it, and so Higbie fell to work and I took the steering-oar. When we had pulled a mile, laboriously, we were evidently in serious peril, for the storm had greatly A JUMP i'OK LIFE. augmented ; the billows ran very high and were capped with foaming crests, the heavens were hung with black, and the wind blew with great fury. We would have gone back, now, but we did not dare to turn the boat around, because as soon as she got in the trough of the sea she would upset, of course. Our only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the seas. It was hard work to do this, she plunged so, and so beat and belabored the billows with her rising and falling bows. Now and then one of Higbie's oars would trip on the top of a wave, and the other one would snatch the boat half around in spite of my cumbersome steering apparatus. We were drenched by the sprays constantly, and the boat occasionally shipped water. By and by, powerful as my comrade was, his great exertions began to tell on him, and he was anxious that I should change places with him till he could rest a little. But I told him this was impossible ; for if the steering oar were dropped a 18f 274 A NUT FOR GEOLOGISTS. moment while we changed, the boat would slue around into the trough of the sea, capsize, and in less than five minutes we would have a hundred gallons of soap-suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we could not even be present at our own inquest. But things cannot last always. Just as the darkness shut down we came booming into port, head on. Higbie dropped his oars to hurrah — I dropped mine to help — the sea gave the boat a twist, and over she went ! The agony that alkali water inflicts on bruises, chafes and blistered hands, is unspeakable, and nothing but greasing all over will modify it — but we. ate, drank and slept well, that night, notwithstanding. In speaking of the peculiarities of Mono Lake, I ought to have mentioned that at intervals all around its shores stand picturesque turret-looking masses and clusters of a whitish, coarse-grained rock that resembles inferior mortar dried hard ; and if one breaks off fragments of this rock he will find perfectly shaped and thoroughly petrified gulls' eggs deeply imbedded in the mass. How did they get there ? I simply state the fact — for it is a fact — and leave the geological reader to crack the nut at his leisure and solve the problem after his own fashion. At the end of a week we adjourned to the Sierras on a fishing excursion, and spent several days in camp under snowy Castle Peak, and fished successfully for trout in a bright, miniature lake whose surface was between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea; cooling ourselves during the hot August noons by sitting on snow banks ten feet deep, under whose sheltering edges fine grass and dainty flowers flourished luxuriously ; and at night entertaining ourselves by almost freezing to death. Then we returned to Mono Lake, and finding that the cement excitement was over for the present, packed up and went back to Esmeralda. Mr. Ballou reconnoitred awhile, and not liking the prospect, set >ut alone for Humboldt. About this time occurred a little incident which has always UNLOOKED FOR EXPLOSION. 275 had a sort of interest to me, from the fact that it came so near " instigating " my funeral. At a time when an Indian attack had been expected, the citizens hid their gunpowder where it would be safe and yet convenient to hand when wanted. A neighbor of ours hid six cans of rifle powder in the bake-oven of an old discarded cooking stove which stood on the open ground near a frame out-house or shed, and from and after that day never thought of it again. "We hired a half-tamed Indian to do some washing for us, and he t^ok up quarters under the shed with his tub. The ancient stove reposed with- in six feet of him, and before his face. Finally it occurred to him that hot water would be better than cold, and he went out and fired up under that forgotten powder magazine and set on a kettle of water. Then he returned to his tub. I STOVE HEAP GONE. entered the shed presently and threw down some more clothes, and was about to speak to him when the stove blew up with a prodigious crash, and disappeared, leaving not a splinter be- hind. Fragments of it fell in the streets full two hundred yards away. Nearly a third of the shed roof over our heads 276 AN INDIAN'S WORDS FEW BUT EXPRESSIVE. was destroyed, and one of the stove lids, after cutting a small stanchion half in two in front of the Indian, whizzed between us and drove partly through the weather-boarding beyond. I was as white as a sheet and as weak as a kitten and speechless. But the Indian betrayed no trepidation, no distress, not even discomfort. He simply stopped washing, leaned forward and surveyed the clean, blank ground a moment, and then re- marked : " Mph ! Dam stove heap gone ! " — and resumed his scrub- bing as placidly as if it were an entirely customary thing for a stove to do. I will explain, that " heap " is " Injun-English " for " very much." The reader will perceive the exhaustive expressiveness of it in the present instance. CHAPTEB XL. I NOW come to a curious episode — the most curious, I think, that had yet accented my slothful, valueless, heed- less career. Out of a hillside toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that extended deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a company entitled the " Wide West." There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deep on the under side of the croppings, and everybody was acquainted with the rock that came from it — and tolerably rich rock it was, too, but nothing extraordinary. I will remark here, that although to the inexperienced stranger all the quartz of a particular " district " looks about alike, an old resident of the camp can take a glance at a mixed pile of rock, separate the fragments and tell you which mine each came from, as easily as a confectioner can separate and classify the various kinds and qualities of candy in a mixed heap of the article. All at once the town was thrown into a state of extraor- dinary excitement. In mining parlance the Wide West had " struck it rich ! " Everybody went to see the new developments, and for some days there was such a crowd of people about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would have supposed there was a mass meeting in session there. No other topic was discussed but the rich strike, and nobody thought or dreamed about anything else. Every man brought away a specimen, ground it up in a hand mortar, washed it out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the marvelous result. It 27S THE "WIDE WEST" SILVER LEDGE. was not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff which could be crumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread out on a paper exhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and par- ticles of "native" silver. Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had washed it out his amazement was beyond description. Wide West stock soared skywards. It was said that repeated offers had been made for it at a thou- sand dollars a foot, and promptly refused. We have all had the " blues " — the mere sky-blues — but mine were indigo, now — because I did not own in the Wide West. The world seemed hollow to me, and existence a grief. I lost my appe- tite, and ceased to take an interest in anything. Still I had to stay, and listen to other people's rejoicings, because I had no money to get out of the camp with. The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of " specimens," and well they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sum of some consequence. To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark that a sixteen-hun- dred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at the mouth of the shaft, at one dollar a pound / and the man who bought it " packed " it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over the mountains, to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a rate that would richly compensate him for his trouble. The Wide West people also commanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives permission to enter the mine at any time or for any purpose. I kept up my " blue " meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of a different sort. He puzzled over the " rock," examined it with a glass, inspected it in different lights and from different points of view, and after each experiment delivered himself, in soliloquy, of one and the same unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula : " It is not Wide West rock ! " He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West shaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not care whether he got a look into it or not. He failed that day, and tried again at night ; failed again ; got up at HIGBIE "INTERVIEWS" THE MINE, 279 dawn and tried, and failed again. Then he lay in ambush in the sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or three hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner ; made a start once, but was premature — one of the men came bads for something ; tried it again, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men rose up from behind the boul der as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on the ground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to the mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope and slid down the shaft. He disap- peared in the gloom of a " side drift " just as a head appeared in the mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted "Hello!"— which he did not answer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour later he en- tered the cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, and exclaimed in a stage whis per: " I knew it ! We are rich ! It's a blind lead ! " I thought the very earth reeled under me. Doubt — conviction — doubt again- ultation — hope, amazement, belief, unbelief — every emo- tion imaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain, and I could not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental fury, I shook myself to rights, and said: " Say it again ! " INTERVIEWING THE "WIDE WEST. 280 BLIND LEAD" DISCOVERED. "It's a blind lead!" " Cal., let's — let's burn the house — or kill somebody ! Let's get out where there's room to hurrah ! But what is the use? It is a hundred times too good to be true." " It's a blind lead, for a million ! — hanging wall — foot wall — clay casings — everything complete ! " He swung his hat and gave three cheers, and I cast dpubt to the winds and chimed in with a will. For I was worth a million dollars, and did not care " whether school kept or not ! " But perhaps I ought to explain. A "blind lead" is a lead or ledge that does not " crop out " above the surface. A miner does not know where to look for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by accident in the course of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie knew the Wide West rock perfectly well, and the more he had ex- amined the new de- velopments the more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come from the Wide West vein. And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the camp, that there was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide West people themselves did not suspect it. He was right. When he went down the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way through the Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was enclosed in its own well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was public prop- WORTH A MILLION. "UP IN A BALLOON."— RICH AT LAST. 281 erty. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for any miner to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not. We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the foreman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the great surprise to him. Higbie said : " We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out any more of the rock. You cannot help your company in this matter — nobody can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove to your entire satisfaction that it is a blind lead. Now we propose to take you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. What do you say ? " What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth his hand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind and without wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to his name ? He could only say, "Agreed." The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder's books before ten o'clock. We claimed two hun- dred feet each — six hundred feet in all — the smallest and com- pactest organization in the district, and the easiest to manage. ISTo one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night. Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awake and think, dream, scheme. The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace, the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany. Each new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled me bodily over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture just as if an elec- tric battery had been applied to me. We shot fragments of conversation back and forth at each other. Once Higbie said : " When are you going home — to the States ? " " To-morrow ! " — with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position. " Well — no — but next month, at furthest." " We'll go in the same steamer." " Agreed." HOW SHALL WE SPEND OUR MONEY? A pause. "Steamer of the 10th?" "Yes. No, the 1st." "AH right," Another pause. " Where are you going to live?" said Higbie. " San Francisco." " That's me ! " Pause. "Too high— too much climbing "—from Higbie "What is?" " I was thinking of Eussian Hill— building a house uo there." * " Too much climbing ? Shan't you keep a carriage ? " " Of course. I forgot that." Pause. " Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build ? " MILLIONAIRES LAYING PLANS. " I was thinking about that. Three-story and an attic." "But what kind?" " Well, I don't hardly know. Brick, I suppose." WE TIRE OF WEALTH — AND PLAY CRIBBAGE. 283 "Brick—bosh." " Why ? What is your idea ? " " Brown stone front — French plate glass — billiard-room off the dining-room — statuary and paintings — shrubbery and two- acre grass plat — greenhouse — iron dog on the front stoop — gray horses — landau, and a coachman with a bug on his hat I " "By George!" A long pause. " Cal., when are you going to Europe ? " " Well— I hadn't thought of that. When are you ? " " In the Spring." " Going to be gone all summer ? " " All summer ! I shall remain there three years." " No — but are you in earnest ? " "Indeed I am." " I will go along too." " Why of course you will." " What part of Europe shall you go to ? " " All parts. France, England, Germany — Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria, Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt — • all over — everywhere." " I'm agreed." " All right" "Won't it be a swell trip 1" " We'll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one, anyway." Another long pause. " Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening to stop our — " " Hang the butcher ! " " Amen." And so it went on. By three o'clock we found it was no use, and so we got up and played cribbage and smoked pipes till sunrise. It was my week to cook. I always hated cook- ing — now, I abhorred it. The news was all over town. The former excitement was great — this one was greater still. I walked the streets serene 2S4 DUTY BEFORE PLEASURE. and happy. Higbie said the foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his third of the mine. I said I would like to see myself selling for any such price. My ideas were lofty. My figure was a million. Still, I honestly believe that if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effect than to make me hold off for more. I found abundant enjoyment in being rich. A man offered me a three-hundred-dollar horse, and wanted to take my sim- ple, unendorsed note for it. That brought the most realizing sense I had yet had that I was actually rich, beyond shadow of doubt. It was followed by numerous other evidences of a similar nature — among which I may mention the fact of the butcher leaving us a double supply of meat and saying nothing about money. By the laws of the district, the " locators " or claimants of a ledge were obliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work on their new property within ten days after the date of the location, or the property was forfeited, and anybody could go and seize it that chose. So we determined to go to work the next day. About the middle of the afternoon, as I was coming out of the post office, I met a Mr. Gardiner, who told me that Capt. John K ye was lying dangerously ill at his place (the " Nine-Mile Eanch "), and that he and his wife were not able to give him nearly as much care and attention as his case demanded. I said ii he would wait for me a moment, I would go down and help in the sick room. I ran to the cabin to tell Higbie. He was not there, but I left a note on the table for him, and a few minutes later I left town in Gardiner's wagon. OHAPTEE XLI. CAPTAIN NYE was very ill indeed, with spasmodic rheumatism. But the old gentleman was himself — which is to say, he was kind-hearted and agreeable when com- fortable, but a singularly violent wild-cat when things did not go well. He would be smiling along pleasantly enough, when a sudden spasm of his disease would take him and he would go out of his smile into a perfect fury. He would groan and wail and howl with the anguish, and fill up the odd chinks with the most elaborate profanity that strong convictions and a fine fancy could contrive. With fair opportunity he could swear very well and handle his adjectives with considerable judgment ; but when the spasm was on him it was painful to listen to him, he was so awkward. However, I had seen him nurse a sick man himself and put up patiently with the incon- veniences of the situation, and consequently I was willing that he should have full license now that his own turn had come. He could not disturb me, with all his raving and ranting, for my mind had work on hand, and it labored on diligently, night and day, whether my hands were idle or employed. I was altering and amending the plans for my house, and think- ing over the propriety of having the billiard-room in the attic, instead of on the same floor with the dining-room ; also, I was trying to decide between green and blue for the upholstery of the drawing-room, for, although my preference was blue I feared it was a color that would be too easily damaged by dust and sunlight ; likewise while I was content to put the coach- 2SC DAY DREAM OF A MILLIONAIRE man in a modest livery, I was uncertain about a footman — I needed one, and was even resolved to have one, but wished he could properly appear and perform his functions out of livery, for I somewhat dreaded so much show ; and yet, inasmuch as my late grandfather had had a coachman and such things, but no liveries, I felt rather drawn to beat him ; — or beat his ghost^ at any rate ; I was also systematizing the European trip, and managed to get it all laid out, as to route and length of time to be devoted to it — everything, with one exception — namely, whether to cross the desert from Cairo to Jerusalem per camel, or go by sea to Beirut, and thence down through the country per caravan. Meantime I was writing to the friends at home every day, instructing them concerning all my plans and in- tentions, and directing them to look up a handsome homestead for my mother and agree upon a price for it against my com- ing, and also directing them to sell my share of the Tennessee land and tender the proceeds to the widows' and orphans' fund of the typographical union of which I had long been a member in good standing. [This Tennessee land had been in the possession of the family many years, and promised to con- fer high fortune upon us some day ; it still promises it, but in a less violent way.] "When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was somewhat better, but very feeble. During the afternoon we lifted him into a chair and gave him an alcoholic vapor bath, and then set about putting him on the bed again. We had to be exceedingly careful, for the least jar produced pain. Gardiner had his shoulders and I his legs ; in an unfortunate moment I stumbled and the patient fell heavily on the bed in an agony of torture. I never heard a man swear so in my life. He raved like a maniac, and tried to snatch a revolver from the table — but I got it. He ordered me out of the house, and swore a world of oaths that he would kill me wherever he caught me when he got on his feet again. It was simply a passing fury, and meant nothing. I knew he would forget it in an hour, and maybe be sorry for it, too ; but it angered me a little, at the moment. So much so, indeed, that I determined A FIT SUBJECT FOR SYMPATHY. 287 to go back to Esmeralda. I thought lie was able to get along alone, now, since lie was on the war path. I took supper, and as soon as the moon rose, began my nine-mile journey, on foot. DANGEROUSLY SICK. Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-mile jaunt without baggage. As I "raised the hill" overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen minutes of twelve. I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon, and in the bright moonlight saw what appeared to be about half the population of the village massed on and around the Wide West croppings. My heart gave an exulting bound, and I said to myself, " They have made a new strike to-night — and struck it richer than ever, no doubt." I started over there, but gave it up. I said the " strike " would keep, and I had climbed hills enough for one night. I went on down through the town, and as I was passing a little German bakery, a woman ran out and begged me to come in and help her. She said her husband had a fit. I went in, and judged she was right — he appeared to have a hundred of them, com- pressed into one. Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not making much of a success of it. I ran up the OUR BALLOON BURSTS. street half a block or so and routed out a sleeping doctor, brought him down half dressed, and we four wrestled with the maniac, and doctored, drenched and bled him, for more than an hour, and the poor German woman did the crying. He grew quiet, now, and the doctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends. It was a little after one o'clock. As. I entered the cabin door, tired but jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie, sitting by the pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his fingers, and looking pale, old, and hag- gard. I halted, and looked at him. He looked at me, stol- idly. I said : "Higbie, what — what is it?" "We're ruined — we didn't do the WOrk THE BLIND LEAD'S RELOCATED ! " It was enough. I sat down sick, grieved — broken- hearted, indeed. A minute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity ; I was a pau- per now, and very meek. We sat still an hour, busy with thought, busy with vain and useless self-upbraidings, busy with " Why didn't I do this, and why didnH I do that," but neither spoke a word. Then we dropped into mutual explanations, and the mystery was cleared away. It came out that Higbie had depended on me, as I had on him, and as both of us had on the foreman. The folly of it ! It was the first time that ever staid and steadfast Higbie had left an important matter to chance or failed to be true to his full share of a responsibility. "VVOKTH NOTHING. UNAVAILABLE REGRETS AND EXPLANATIONS. 289 But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this moment was the first time he had been in the cabin since the day he had seen me last. He, also, had left a note for me, on that same fatal afternoon — had ridden up on horse- back, and looked through the window, and being in a hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin through a broken pane. Here it was, on the floor, where it had re- mained undisturbed for nine days : " Don't fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W. has passed through and given me notice. I am to join him at Mono Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night. He says he will find it this time, sure. Cal." "W." meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed " cement ! " That was the way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no more withstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement like this "cement" foolishness, than he could re- frain from eating when he was famishing. Higbie had been dreaming about the marvelous cement for months ; and now, against his better judgment; he had gone off and " taken the chances " on my keeping secure a mine worth a million undis- covered cement veins. They had not been followed this time. His riding out of town in broad daylight was such a common- place thing to do that it had not attracted any attention. He said they prosecuted their search in the fastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without success ; they could not find the cement. Then a ghastly fear came over him that something might have happened to prevent the doing of the necessary work to hold the blind lead (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly possible), and forthwith he started home with all speed. He would have reached Esmeralda in time, but his horse broke down and he had to walk a great part of the distance. And so it happened that as he came into Esmeralda by one road, I entered it by another. His was the superior energy, however, for he went straight to the Wide West, instead of turning aside as I had done — and he arrived there about five or ten minutes too late ! The " notice " 19f 290 Till: THIRD PARTNER PLAYS TO WIN. was already up, the "relocation" of our mine completed be- yond recall, and the crowd rapidly dispersing. He learned some facts before he left the ground. The foreman had not been seen about the streets since the night we had located the mine — a telegram had called him to California on a matter of life and death, it was said. At any rate he had done no work and the watchful eyes of the community were taking note of the fact. At midnight of this woful tenth day, the ledge would be "relocatable," and by eleven o'clock the hill was black with men prepared to do the relocating. That was the crowd I had seen when I fancied a new " strike " had been made — idiot that I was. [We three had the same right to relocate the lead that other people had, provided we were quick enough.] As midnight was announced, fourteen men, duly armed and ready to back their proceedings, put up their "notice" and proclaimed their ownership of the blind lead, under the new name of the " Johnson." But A. D. Allen our partner (the foreman) put in a sudden appearance about that time, with a cocked revolver in his hand, and said his name must be added to the list, or he would " thin out the Johnson company some." He was a manly, splendid, de- ENFORCING A COMPROMISE. THE THREE MILLIONAIRES. 291 termined fellow, and known to be as good as his word, and therefore a compromise was effected. They put in his name for a hundred feet, reserving to themselves the customary two hundred feet each. Such was the history of the night's events, as Higbie gathered from a friend on the way home. Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the next morning, glad to get away from the scene of our suffer ings, and after a month or two of hardship and disappoint* ment, returned to Esmeralda once more. Then we learned that the Wide West and the Johnson companies had consoli- dated ; that the stock, thus united, comprised five thousand feet, or shares ; that the foreman, apprehending tiresome liti- gation, and considering such a huge concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet for ninety thousand dollars in gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it. If the stock was worth such a gallant figure, with Hive thousand shares in the corpora- tion, it makes me dizzy to think what it would have been worth with only our original six hundred in it. It was the difference between six hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning it. We would have been millionaires if we had only worked with pick and spade one little day on our property and so secured our ownership ! It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many witnesses, and likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda District, is easily obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can always have it to say that I was absolutely and unquT tionably worth a million dollars, once, for ten days. A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable olu millionaire partner, Higbie, wrote me from an obscure little mining camp in California that after nine or ten years of buf- fetings and hard striving, he was at last in a position where he could command twenty-five hundred dollars, and said he meant to go into the fruit business in a modest way. How such a thought would have insulted him the night we lay in our cabin planning European trips and brown stone houses on Russian Hill ! CHAPTEE XLII. TTTHAT to do next ? V V It was a momentous question. I had gon«? out into the world to shift for myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends ; and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Yirginian stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could not live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with). I had gained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not dazzled anybody with my successes ; still the list was before me, and the amplest liberty in the matter of choosing, provided I wanted to work — which I did not, after being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery clerk, for one day, but had consumed so much sugar in that time that I was relieved from further duty by the proprietor ; said he wanted me outside, so that he could have my custom. I had studied law an entire week, and then given it up because it was so prosy and tiresome. I had engaged briefly in the study of blacksmithing, but wasted so much time trying to fix the bellows so that it would blow itself, that the master turned me adrift in disgrace, and told me I would come to no good. I had been a bookseller's clerk for awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, but my prescriptions were un- lucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps than soda water. So I had to go. I had made of myself a tolerable printer, under the impression that I would be another Frank- OBSTACLES TO MY SUCCESS. 293 ONE OF MY FAILURES. lin some day, but somehow had missed the connection thns far. There was no berth open in the Esmeralda Union, and besides I had always been such a slow compos- itor that I looked with envy upon the achievements of ap- prentices of two years' standing ; and when I took a "take," foremen were in the habit of suggesting that it would be wanted " some time during the year." I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilot and by no means ashamed of my abilities in that line; wages were two hundred and fifty dollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind a wheel again and never roam any more — but I had been making such an ass of myself lately in grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and my European excursion that I did what many and many a poor disappointed miner had done before ; said " It is all over with me now, and I will never go back home to be pitied — and snubbed." I had been a private secretary, a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and amounted to less than nothing in each, and now — What to do next ? I yielded to Higbie's appeals and consented to try the mining once more. We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a little rubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep. Higbie descended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosened up a deal of rock and dirt and then I went down with a long-handled 29± I TRY A NEW PATH. shovel (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it out. You must brace the shovel forward with the side of your knee till it is full, and then, with a skilful toss, throw it backward over your left shoulder. I made the toss, and landed the mess just on the edge of the shaft and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck. I , ... never said a word, but climbed out and walked home. I inwardly resolved that I would starve before I would make a target of my- self and shoot rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel. I sat down, in the cabin, and gave myself up to solid misery — so to speak. Now in pleasanter days I had amused myself with writing letters to the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily Territorial Enter- prise, and had always been surprised when they ap- peared in print. My good opinion of the editors had steadily declined ; for it seemed to me that they might have found something better to fill up with than my literature. I had found a letter in the post office as T came home from the hill side, and finally I opened it. Eureka ! [I never did know what Eureka meant, but it seems to be as proper a word to heave in as any when no other that sounds pretty offers.] It was a deliberate offer to me of Twenty-Five Dollars a week to come up to Yirginia and be city editor of the Enterprise. I would have challenged the publisher in the " blind lead " days— I wanted to fall down and worship him, now. Twenty- Five Dollars a week— it looked like bloated luxury— a fortune a sinful and lavish waste of money. But my transports TARGET SHOOTING. FITTING FOR DUTY. 295 cooled when I thought of my inexperience and consequent unfitness for the position — and straightway, on top of this, my long array of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this place I must presently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a thing necessarily distasteful to a man who had never experienced such a humiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to be proud of, since it is so common — but then it was all I had to he proud of. So I was scared into being a city editor. I would have declined, otherwise. Necessity is the mother of "taking chances." I do not doubt that if, at that time, I had been offered a salary to translate the Talmud from the original Hebrew, I would have accepted — albeit with diffidence and some misgivings — and thrown as much variety into it as I could for the money. I went up to Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rusty looking city editor, I am free to confess — coat- less, slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down to the waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But I secured a more Christian costume and discarded the revolver. I had never had occasion to kill anybody, nor ever felt a desire to do so, but had worn the thing in deference to popular sentiment, and in order that I might not, by its absence, be offensively con- spicuous, and a subject of remark. But the other edi- tors, and all the printers, carried revolvers. I asked the chief editor and proprietor (Mr. Goodman, I will call him, since it describes him as well as any name could do) for some instructions with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all AS CITY EDITOR. 296 MY FIRST EFFORT. over town and ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes of the information gained, and write them out for publication. And he added : " Never say ' We learn ' so-and-so, or ' It is reported, or ' It is rumored,' or 'We understand' so-and-so, but go to head- quarters and get the absolute facts, and then speak out and say ' It is so-and-so.' Otherwise, people will not put confidence in your news. Unassailable certainty is the thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation." It was the whole thing in a nut-shell ; and to this day when I find a reporter commencing his article with "We understand," I gather a suspicion that he has not taken as much pains to inform himself as he ought to have done. I moralize well, but I did not always practise well when I was a city editor ; I let fancy get the upper hand of fact too often when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day's experience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody, boring everybody, and finding out that nobody knew anything. At the end of five hours my note- book was still barren. I spoke to Mr. Goodman. He said : " Dan used to make a good thing out of the hay wagons in a dry time when there were no fires or inquests. Are there no hay wagons in from the Truckee ? If there are, you might of the re^ newed activity and all that sort of thing, in the hay business, you know. It isn't sensational or ex- citing, but it fills up and looks business like." I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay truck dragging in from the country. But I made affluent use of it. I multiplied it by sixteen, brought it into town THE ENTIRE MARKET. : AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO GOOD. 1 29' from sixteen different directions, made sixteen separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about hay as Virginia City had never seen in the world before. This was encouraging. Two nonpareil columns had to be filled, and I was getting along. Presently, when things began to look dismal again, a desperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I never was so glad over any mere trifle before in my life. I said to the murderer : " Sir, you are a stranger to me, but } t ou have done me a kindness this day which I can never forget. If whole years of gratitude can be to you any slight compensation, they shall be yours. I was in trouble and you have relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count me your friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor." If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itching desire to do it. I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention to details, and when it was finished experienced but one regret — namely, that they had not hanged my bene- factor on the spot, so that I could work him up too. Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza and found that they had lately come through the hostile Indian country and had fared rather roughly. I made the best of the item that the circumstances permitted, and felt that if I were not confined within rigid limits by the presence of the reporters of the other papers I could add particulars that would make the article much more A FRIEND INDEED. 298 MY LEGITIMATE CALLING. interesting. However, I found one wagon that was going on to California, and made some judicious inquiries of the pro- prietor. When I learned, through his short and surly answers to my cross-questioning, that he was certainly going on and would not be in the city next day to make trouble, I got ahead of the other papers, for I took down his list of names and added his party to the killed and wounded. Having more scope here, I put this wagon through an Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in history. My two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I felt that I had found my legitimate occupation at last. I reasoned within myself that news, and stirring news, too, was what a paper needed, and I felt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it. Mr. Goodman said that I was as good a reporter as Dan. I desired no higher commendation. With encouragement like that, I felt that I could take my pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be and the interests of the paper demanded it. OHAPTEE XLIII. HOWEVER, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned the run of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy to any large extent, and became able to fill my columns without diverging noticeably from the domain of fact. I struck up friendships with the reporters of the other journals, and we swapped " regulars " with each other and thus economized work. " Regulars " are permanent sources of news, like courts, bullion returns, " clean-ups " at the quartz mills, and inquests. Inasmuch as everybody went armed, we had an inquest about every day, and so this department was naturally set down among the " regulars." We had lively papers in those days. My great competitor among the reporters was Boggs of the Union. He was an excellent reporter. Once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated, but as a general thing he was a wary and cautious drinker although always ready to tamper a little with the enemy. He had the advantage of me in one thing ; he could get the monthly public school report and I could not, because the principal hated the Enterprise. One snowy night when the report was due, I started out sadly wondering how I was going to get it. Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street I stumbled on Boggs and asked him where he was going. " After the school report." " I'll go along with you." " No, sir. I'll excuse you." " Just as you say." A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher 300 THE "UNION" GOT NO REPORT— WE DID. of hot punch, and Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. He gazed fondly after the boy and saw him start up the Enter- prise stairs. I said : " I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't, I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get them to let me have a proof of it after they have set it up, though I don't begin to suppose they will. Good night." " Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting around with the boys a little, while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down to the principal's with me." " Now you talk like a rational being. Come along." We plowed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report and returned to our office. It was a short document and soon copied. Meantime Boggs helped himself to the punch. I gave the manuscript back to him and we started out to get an inquest, for we heard pistol shots near by. We got the par- ticulars with little loss of time, for it was only an inferior sort of bar-room murder, and of little interest to the public, and then we separated. Away at three o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were having a relaxing concert as usual — for some of the printers were good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the accor- deon — the proprietor of the Union strode in and desired to know if anybody had heard anything of Boggs or the school report. We stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent. We found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of intoxicated Cornish miners on the iniquity of squandering the public moneys on education " when hundreds and hundreds of honest hard-working men are literally starving for whiskey." [Riotous applause.] He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours. We dragged him away and put him to bed. Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me accountable, though I was innocent of any in- tention or desire to compass its absence from that paper and was as sorry as any one that the misfortune had occurred. A PLEASANT EXCURSION. 301 But we were perfectly friendly. The day that the school report was next due, the proprietor of the " Genessee" mine AN EDUCATIONAL, REPORT. furnished us a buggy and asked us to go down and write some- thing about the property — a very common request and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people. In due time we arrived at the "mine" — nothing but a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being lowered with a windlass. The workmen had just gone off somewhere to dinner. I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk ; so I took an un- lighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the rope, implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start of him, and then swung out over the shaft. I reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe. I lit the candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some specimens and shouted to Boggs to 302 ;he "union" gets a report— we don't. hoist away. No answer. Presently a head appeared in the circle of daylight away aloft, and a voice came down : "Are yon all set?" " All set — hoist away." " Are you comforta* ble?" " Perfectly." " Could you wait a lit- tle?" "Oh certainly — no particular hurry." "Well— good by." "Why? Where are you going ? " "After the school re- port ! " And he did. I staid down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when they hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock. I walked home, too — five miles — up hill. We had no school report next morn- ing but the Union had. NO PARTICULAR HURRY. Six months after my entry into journalism the grand "flush times" of Silverland began, and tliej- continued with unabated splendor for three years. All difficulty about filling up the "local department" ceased, and the only trouble now was how to make the lengthened columns hold the world of incidents and happenings that came to our literary net every day. Vir- ginia had grown to be the " livest " town, for its age and popu- lation, that America had ever produced. The sidewalks VIRGINIA CITY. 303 swarmed with people — to such an extent, indeed, that it was generally no easy matter to stem the human tide. The streets themselves were just as crowded with quartz wagons, freight teams and other vehicles. The procession was endless. So great was the pack, that buggies frequently had to wait half an hour for an opportunity to cross the principal street. Joy sat on every countenance, and there was a glad, almost fierce, intensity in every eye, that told of the money-getting schemes that were seething in every brain and the high hope that held sway in every heart. Money was as plenty as dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and a melancholy coun- tenance was nowhere to be seen. There were military com- panies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres, " hurdy-gurdy houses," wide-open gambling palaces, political pow-wows, civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey mill every fifteen steps, a Board of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor, a City Engineer, a Chief of the Fire Department, with First, Second and Third Assistants, a Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large police force, two Boards of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozen jails and station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building a church. The "flush times" were in magnificent flower! Large fire-proof brick buildings were going up in the principal streets, and the wooden suburbs were spreading out in all directions. Town lots soared up to prices that were amazing. The great " Comstock lode " stretched its opulent length straight through the town from north to south, and every mine on it was in diligent process of development. One of these mines alone employed six hundred and seventy-five men, and in the matter of elections the adage was, "as the ' Gould and Curry ' goes, so goes the city." Laboring men's wages were four and six dollars a day, and they worked in three " shifts " or gangs, and the blasting and picking and shoveling went on without ceasing, night and day. The " city " of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep side of Mount Davidson, seven thousand two hundred 304 LOCATION AND SURROUNDINGS. feet above the level of the sea, and in the clear Nevada atmo- sphere was visible from a distance of fifty miles ! It claimed a population of fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand, and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets like bees and the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the " Corn- stock," hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those same streets. Often we felt our chairs jar, and heard the faint boom of a blast down in the bowels of the earth under the office. The mountain side was so steep that the entire town had a slant to it like a roof. Each street was a ter- race, and from each to the next street be- low the descent was forty or fifty feet. The fronts of the houses were level with the street they MAGNIFICENT PANORAMA. 305 faced, but their rear first floors were propped on lofty stilts ; a man could stand at a rear first floor window of a C street house and look down the chimneys of the row of houses below him facing D street. It was a laborious climb, in that thin atmosphere, to ascend from D to A street, and you were panting and out of breath when you got there ; but you could turn around and go down again like a house a-fire — so to speak. The atmosphere was so rarified, on account of the great altitude, that one's blood lay near the surface always, and the scratch of a pin was a disaster worth worrying about, for the chances were that a grievous erysipelas would ensue. But to offset this, the thin atmosphere seemed to carry heal- ing to gunshot wounds, and therefore, to simply shoot your adversary through both lungs was a thing not likely to afford you any permanent satisfaction, for he would be nearly certain to be around looking for you within the month, and not with an opera glass, either. From Virginia's airy situation one could look over a vast, far-reaching panorama of mountain ranges and deserts ; and whether the day was bright or overcast, whether the sun was rising or setting, or flaming in the zenith, or whether night and the moon held sway, the spectacle was always impressive and beautiful. Over your head Mount Davidson lifted its gray dome, and before and below you a rugged canyon clove the battlemented hills, making a sombre gateway through which a soft-tinted desert was glimpsed, with the silver thread of a river winding through it, bordered with trees which many miles of distance diminished to a delicate fringe ; and still further away the snowy mountains rose up and stretched their long barrier to the filmy horizon — far enough beyond a lake that burned in the desert like a fallen sun, though that, itself, lay fifty miles removed. Look from your window where you would, there was fascination in the picture. At rare intervals — but very rare — there were clouds in our skies, and then the setting sun would gild and flush and glorify this mighty expanse of scenery with a bewildering pomp of color that held the eve like a spell and moved the spirit like music. 20f CHAPTEE XLIV. "A /TY salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I -LV-L seldom drew it. I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollar gold pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and a cumbersome abundance of bright half dollars besides ? [Paper money has never come into use on the Pacific coast.] Reporting was lucrative, and every man in the town was lavish with his money and his " feet." The city and all the great mountain side were riddled with mining shafts. There were more mines than miners. True, not ten of these mines were yielding rock worth hauling to a mill, but everybody said, " "Wait till the shaft gets down where the ledge comes in solid, and then you will see ! " So nobody was discouraged. These were nearly all " wild cat" mines, and wholly worthless, but nobody believed it then. The " Ophir," the " Gould & Curry," the " Mexican," and other great mines on the Comstock lead in Virginia and Gold Hill were turning out huge piles of rich rock every day, and every man believed that his little wild cat claim was as good as any on the " main lead " and would infallibly be worth a thousand dollars a foot when he " got down where it came in solid." Poor fellow, he was blessedly blind to the fact that he never would see that day. So the thousand wild cat shafts burrowed deeper and deeper into the earth day by day, and all men were beside themselves with hope and happiness. How they labored, prophesied, exulted ! Surely nothing like it was ever CREATING NEW STOCK. 30? seen before since the world began. Every one of these wild cat mines — not mines, bnt holes in the ground over imaginary mines — was incorporated and had handsomely engraved " stock " and the stock was salable, too. It was bought and sold with a feverish avidity in the boards every day. You could go up on the mountain side, scratch around and find a ledge (there was no lack of them), put up a " notice " with a grandiloquent name in it, start a shaft, get your stock printed, and with nothing whatever to prove that your mine was worth a straw, you could put your stock on the market and sell out for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. To make money, and make it fast, was as easy as it was to eat your dinner. Every man owned "feet" in fifty different wild cat mines and con- sidered his fortune made. Think of a ; city with not one solitary poor man in it ! One would suppose that when month after month went by and still not a wild cat mine [by wild cat I mean, in general terms, any claim not located on the mother vein, i. e., the " Comstock") yielded a ton of rock worth crushing, the people would begin to wonder if they were not putting too much faith in their prospective riches ; but there was not a thought of such a thing. They burrowed away, bought and sold, and were happy. New claims were taken up daily, and it was the friendly custom to run straight to the newspaper offices, give the re- A NEW MINE. 808 EDITORIAL PUFFING. porter forty or fifty " feet," and get them to go and examine the mine and publish a notice of it. They did not care a fig what you said about the property so you said something. Consequently we generally said a word or two to the effect that the " indications " were good, or that the ledge was " six feet wide," or that the rock " resembled the Comstock " (and so it did — but as a general thing the resemblance was not startling enough to knock you down). If the rock was moder- ately promising, we followed the custom of the country, used strong adjectives and frothed at the mouth as if a very marvel in silver discoveries had transpired. If the mine was a " de- veloped " one, and had no pay ore to show (and of course it hadn't), we praised the tunnel ; said it was one of the most infatuating tunnels in the land ; driveled and driveled about the tunnel till we ran entirely out of ecstasies — but never said a word about the rock. We would squander half a column of adulation on a shaft, or a new wire rope, or a dressed pine windlass, or a fascinating force pump, and close with a burst of admiration of the " gentlemanly and efficient Superintendent " of the mine — but never utter a whisper about the rock. And those people were always pleased, always satisfied. Occasion- ally we patched up and varnished our reputation for discrimi- nation and stern, undeviating accuracy, by giving some old abandoned claim a blast that ought to have made its dry bones rattle — and then somebody would seize it and sell it on the fleeting notoriety thus conferred upon it. There was nothing in the shape of a mining claim that was not salable. We received presents of " feet " every day. If we needed a hundred dollars or so, we sold some ; if not, we hoarded it away, satisfied that it would ultimately be worth a thousand dollars a foot. I had a trunk about half full of " stock." When a claim made a stir in the market and went up to a high figure, I searched through my pile to see if I had any of its stock — and generally found it. The prices rose and fell constantly ; but still a fall disturbed us little, because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we were content to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it NEIGHBORLY COMPLIMENTS. 309 reached it. My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their claims u noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no thought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal " thank you ; " and you were not even obliged by law to furnish that. If you are coming up the street with a couple of baskets of apples in your hands, and you meet a friend, you natu- rally invite him to take a few. That describes the condition of things in Virginia in the "flush times." Every man had his pock- ets full of stock, and it was the actual custom of the country to part with small quantities of it to friends without the asking. Yery often it was a good idea to close the transaction instantly, when a man offered a stock present to a friend, §i | for the offer was only good and binding at that moment, and if the price went to a high figure shortly afterward the procrastina- tion was a thing to be regretted. Mr. Stewart (Senator, now, from Nevada) one day told me He would give me twenty feet of " Justis " stock if I would walk over to his office. It was worth five or ten dollars a foot, I asked him to make the offer good for next day, as I was just going to dinner. He said he would not be in town ; so I risked it and took my dinner instead of the stock. Within the week the price went up to seventy dollars and afterward to a hundred and fifty, but nothing could make that man yield. I suppose he sold that stock of mine and placed the guilty proceeds in his own pocket. [My revenge will be found in the accompanying portrait.] I met three friends one after- noon, who said they had been buying " Overman " stock at "TRY a few?" 310 DELATS ARE DANGEROUS. PORTRAIT OF MR. STEWART. auction at eight dollars a foot. One said if I would come up to his office he would give me fifteen feet ; another said he would add fifteen ; the third said he would do the same. But I was going after an inquest and could not stop. A few weeks afterward they sold all their " Overman " at six hun- dred dollars a foot and gen- erously came around to tell me about it — and also to urge me to accept of the next forty- five feet of it that people tried to force on me. These are actual facts, and I could make the list a long one and still confine myself strictly to the truth. Many a time friends gave us as much as twenty-five feet of stock that was selling at twenty-five dollars a foot, and they thought no more of it than they would of offering a guest a cigar. These were " flush times" indeed! I thought they were going to last always, but somehow I never was much of a prophet. To show what a wild spirit possessed the mining brain of the community, I will remark that " claims " were actually "located" in excavations for cellars, where the pick had ex- posed what seemed to be quartz veins — and not cellars in the suburbs, either, but in the very heart of the city ; and forth- with stock would be issued and thrown on the market. It was small matter who the cellar belonged to — the " ledge " belonged to the finder, and unless the United States government inter- fered (inasmuch as the government holds the primary right to mines of the noble metals in Nevada — or at least did then), it was considered to be his privilege to work it. Imagine a stranger staking out a mining claim among the costly shrub- bery m your front yard and calmly proceeding to lay waste the ground with pick and shovel and blasting powder ! It has been often done in California. In the middle of one of the SALTING MINES. 311 principal business streets of Virginia, a man "located" a mining claim and began a shaft on it. He gave me a hundred feet of the stock and I sold it for a fine suit of clothes because I was afraid somebody would fall down the shaft and sue for damages. I owned in another claim that was located in the middle of another street ; and to show how absurd people can be, that "East India" stock (as it was called) sold briskly although there was an ancient tunnel running directly under the claim and any man could go into it and see that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything that remotely resembled one. One plan of acquiring sudden wealth was to " salt " a wild, cat claim and sell out while the excitement was up. The process was simple. The schemer located a worthless ledge, sunk a shaft on it, b o ugh t a wagon load of rich "Corn- stock" ore, dumped a portion of it into the shaft and piled the rest by its side, above ground. Then he showed the property to a simpleton and sold it to him at a high figure. Of course the wagon load of rich ore was all that the victim ever got out of his purchase. A most remarkable case of " salting " was that of the " North Ophir." It was claimecLthat this vein was a remote " exten- SELLING A MINE. 312 A TRAGEDIAN IN A NEW ROLE. sion " of the original " Ophir," a valuable mine on the " Corn- stock." For a few days everybody was talking about the rich developments in the North Ophir. It was said that it yielded perfectly pure silver in small, solid lumps. I went to the place with the owners, and found a shaft six or eight feet deep, in the bottom of which was a badly shattered vein of dull, yellowish, unpromising rock. One would as soon expect to find silver in a grindstone. We got out a pan of the rub- bish and washed it in a puddle, and sure enough, among the sediment we found half a dozen black, bullet-looking pellets of unimpeachable " native " silver. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing before ; science could not account for such a queer novelty. The stock rose to sixty-five dollars a foot, and at this figure the world-renowned tragedian, McKean Bucha- nan, bought a commanding interest and prepared to quit the stage once more — he was always doing that. And then it transpired that the mine had been " salted " — and not in any hackneyed way, either, but in a singularly bold, barefaced and peculiarly original and outrageous fashion. On one of the lumps of " native " silver was discovered the minted legend, " ted States of," and then it was plainly apparent that the mine had been " salted " with melted half-dollars ! The lumps thus obtained had been blackened till they resembled native silver, and were then mixed with the shattered rock in the bottom of the shaft. It is literally true. Of course the price of the stock at once fell to nothing, and the tragedian was ruined. But for this calamity we might have lost McKean Buchanan from the stage. OHAPTEE XLT. THE " flush times " held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr. Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty dollars and set out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new city of Yirginia. They found the Territorial Enterprise, a poverty-stricken weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die. They bought it, type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a thousand dok lars, on long time. The editorial sanctum, news-room, press- room, publication office, bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen were all compressed into one apartment and it was a small one, too. The editors and printers slept on the floor, a China- man did their cooking, and the " imposing-stone " was the general dinner table. But now things were changed. The paper was a great daily, printed by steam ; there were five editors and twenty-three compositors; the subscription price was sixteen dollars a year ; the advertising rates were exorbi- tant, and the columns crowded. The paper was clearing from six to ten thousand dollars a month, and the " Enterprise Build- ing" was finished and ready for occupation — a stately fire- proof brick. Every day from five all the way up to eleven columns of " live " advertisements were left out or crowded into spasmodic and irregular " supplements." The " Gould & Curry " company were erecting a monster hundred-stamp mill at a cost that ultimately fell little short of a million dollars. Gould & Curry stock paid heavy dividends • — a rare thing, and an experience confined to the dozen or fif- 314: BANITAB7 COMMISSION FUND. teen claims located on the " main lead," the " Comstock." The Superintendent of the Gould & Curry lived, rent free, in a fine house built and furnished by the company. He drove a fine pair of horses which were a present from the company, and his salary was twelve thousand dollars a year. The super- intendent of another of the great mines traveled in grand state, had a salary of twenty-eight thousand dollars a year, and in a law suit in after days claimed that he was to have had one per cent, on the gross yield of the bullion likewise. Money was wonderfully plenty. The trouble was, not ■ how to get it, — but how to spend it, how to lavish it, get rid of it, squander it. And so it was a happy thing that just at this juncture the news came over the wires that a great United States Sanitary Commission had been formed and money was wanted for the relief of the wounded sailors and soldiers of the Union languishing in the Eastern hospitals. Right on the heels of it came word that San Francisco had responded superbly before the telegram was half a day old. Virginia rose as one man ! A Sanitary Committee was hurriedly organized, and its chairman mounted a vacant cart in C street and tried to make the clamorous mul- titude understand that the rest of the committee were flying hither and thither and working with all their might and main, and that if the town would only wait an hour, an office would be ready, books opened, and the Commission prepared to receive contributions. His voice was drowned and his infor- mation lost in a ceaseless roar of cheers, and demands that the money be received now — they swore they would not wait. The chairman pleaded and argued, but, deaf to all entreaty, men plowed their way through the throng and rained checks ,of gold coin into the cart and skurried away for more. Hands .clutching money, were thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped this eloquent appeal would cleave a road their strag- glings could not open. The very Chinamen and Indians caught the excitement and dashed their half dollars into the cart without knowing or caring what it was all about. Women plunged into the crowd, trimly attired, fought their way to the WILD ENTHUSIASM OF THE PEOPLE. 315 cart with their coin, and emerged again, by and by, with their apparel in a state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia had ever seen and the most determined and un- governable ; and when at last it abated its fury and dispersed, couldn't wait. it had not a penny in its pocket. To use its own phraseology, it came there " flush " and went away " busted." After that, the Commission got itself into systematic work- ing order, and for weeks the contributions flowed into its treasury in a generous stream. Individuals and all sorts of organizations levied upon themselves a regular weekly tax for 316 THE SANITARY FLOUR SACK. the sanitary fund, graduated according to their means, and there was not another grand universal outburst till the famous " Sanitary Flour Sack " came our way. Its history is peculiar and interesting. A former schoolmate of mine, by the name of Reuel Gridley, was living at the little city of Austin, in the Reese river country, at this time, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor He and the Republican candidate made an agreement that the defeated man should be publicly pre- sented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by the successful one, and should carry it home on his shoulder. Gridley was defeated. The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it and carried it a mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in Upper Austin, attended by a band of music and the whole population. Arrived there, he said he did not need the flour, and asked what the people thought he had better do with it. A voice said : " Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sani- tary fund." The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounted -a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher and higher, as the sympa- thies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till at last the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fifty dollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour delivered, and he said : " Nowhere — sell it again." Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired till the sun went down ; and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the sack to three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand dollars in gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession. The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back : " Fetch along your flour sack ! " Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an after- noon mass meeting was held in the Opera House, and the auction began. But the sack had come sooner than it was THE SACK IN GOLD HILL AND DAYTON. 317 expected ; the people were not thoroughly aroused, and the sale dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars had been secured, and there was a crestfallen feeling in the com- munity. However, there was no disposition to let the matter rest here and acknowledge vanquishment at the hands of the village of Austin. Till late in the night the principal citizens were at work arranging the morrow's campaign, and when they went to bed they had no fears for the result. At eleven the next morning a procession of open carriages, attended by clamorous bands of music and adorned with a moving display of flags, filed along C street and was soon in danger of blockade by a huzzaing multitude of citizens. In the first carriage sat Gridley, with the flour sack in prominent view, the latter splendid with bright paint and gilt lettering ; also in the same carriage sat the mayor and the recorder. The other carriages contained the Common Council, the editors and reporters, and other people of imposing consequence. The crowd pressed to the corner of C and Taylor streets, expecting the sale to begin there, but they were disappointed, and also unspeakably surprised; for the cavalcade moved on as if Virginia had ceased to be of importance, and took its way over the "divide," toward the small town of Gold Hill. Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill, Silver City and Dayton, and those communities were at fever heat and rife for the conflict. It was a very hot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end of a short half hour we descended into Gold Hill with drums beating and colors flying, and enveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole population — men, women and children, Chinamen and Indians, were massed in the main street, all the flags in town were at the mast head, and the blare of the bands was drowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and asked who would make the first bid for the National Sanitary Flour Sack. Gen. W. said : " The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thou- sand dollars, coin ! " A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Yirginia, and fifteen minutes afterward that city's 318 RETURNED TO VIRGINIA CITY. population was massed in the streets devouring the tidings — for it was part of the programme that the bulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes a new dispatch was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the excite- ment grew. Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley to bring back the flour sack; but such was not the plan of the campaign. At the end of an hour Gold Hill's small population had paid a figure for the flour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the grand total was displayed upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley cavalcade moved on, a giant refreshed with new lager beer and plenty of it — for the people brought it to the carriages without waiting to measure it — and within three hours more the expedition had carried Silver City and Dayton by storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move had been telegraphed and bulletined, and as the pro- cession entered Virginia and filed down C street at half past eight in the evening the town was abroad in the thorough- fares, torches were glaring, flags flying, bands playing, cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the city ready to surrender at discretion. The auction began, every bid was greeted with bursts of applause, and at the end of two hours and a half a population of fifteen thousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sum equal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks ! It was at a rate in the neighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child of the population. The grand total would have been twice as large, but the streets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to bid could not get within a block of the stand, and could not make themselves heard. These grew tired of waiting and many of them went home long before the auction was over. This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps. Gridley sold the sack in Carson city and several California towns ; also in San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or two Atlantic cities, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that he finally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being held, and after selling it MR. GRIDLEI AND HIS LABORS 319 there for a large sum and helping on the enthusiasm by dis- playing the portly silver bricks which Nevada's donation had produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and re- tailed them at high prices. It was estimated that when the flour sack's mission was ended it had been sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks! This is probably the only instance on record^where common family flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market. It is due to Mr. Gridley's memory to mention that the expenses of his sanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thou- sand miles, going and returning, were paid in large part, if not entirely, out of his own pocket. The time he gave to it was not less than three months. Mr. Gridley was a soldier in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian. He died at Stockton, California, in December, 1870, greatly regretted. OHAPTEE XLTI. THEKE were nabobs in those days — in the " flush times," I mean. Every rich strike in the mines created one or two. I call to mind several of these. They were careless, easy-going fellows, as a general thing, and the community at large was as much benefited by their riches as they were themselves — possibly more, in some cases. Two cousins, teamsters, did some hauling for a man and had to take a small segregated portion of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. They gave an outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on teaming. But not long. Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying each owner $8,000 to $10,000 a month— say $100,000 a year. One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6,000 worth of diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he could not spend his money as fast as he made it. Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16,000 a month ; and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very mine that yielded it, for five dollars a day, when he first came to the country. The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets of fortune — lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a single night — who was able to offer $100,000 for a position of high official distinction, shortly afterward, and did offer it — but failed to get it, his politics not being as sound as 'us bank account. A TRAVELING NABOB. 321 Then there was John Smith. He was a good, honest, kind- hearted soul, born and reared in the lower ranks of life, and miraculously ignorant. He drove a team, and owned a small ranch — a ranch that paid him a comfortable living, for al- though it yielded but little hay, what little it did yield was worth from $250 to $300 in gold per ton in the market. Presently Smith traded a few acres of the ranch for a small undeveloped silver mine in Gold Hill. He opened the mine and built a little unpretending ten-stamp mill. Eighteen months afterward he retired from the hay business, for his mining income had reached a most comfortable figure. Some people said it was $30,000 a month, and others said it was $60,000. Smith was very rich at any rate. And then he went to Europe and traveled. And when he came back he was never tired of telling about the fine hogs he had seen in England, and the gorgeous sheep he had seen in Spain, and the fine cattle he had noticed in the vicinity of Kome. He was full of the wonders of the old world, and advised every- body to travel. He said a man never imagined what surprising things there were in the world till he had traveled. One day, on board ship, the passengers made up a pool of $500, which wac to be the property of the man who should come nearest to guessing the run of the ves- sel for the next twenty-four hours. Next day, toward noon, the figures were all in the purser's hands in sealed en- velopes. Smith was serene and happy, for he had been brib- 21f 3*22 INSTANCES OF SUDDEN WEALTH. ing the engineer. But another party won the prize ! Smith said: " Here, that won't do ! He guessed two miles wider of the mark than I did." The purser said, a Mr. Smith, you missed it further than any man on board. We traveled two hundred and eight miles yesterday." "Well, sir," said Smith, "that's just where I've got you, for I guessed two hundred and nine. If you'll look at my figgers again you'll find a 2 and two O's, which stands for 200, don't it ? — and after 'em you'll find a 9 (2009), which stands for two hundred and nine. I reckon I'll take that money, if you please." The Gould & Curry claim comprised twelve hundred feet, and it all belonged originally to the two men whose names it bears. Mr. Curry owned two thirds of it — and he said that he sold it out for twenty-five hundred dollars in cash, and an old plug horse that ate up his market value in hay and barley in seventeen days by the watch. And he said that Gould sold out for a pair of second-hand government blankets and a bot- tle of whisky that killed nine men in three hours, and that an unoffending stranger that smelt the cork was disabled for life. Four years afterward the mine thus disposed of was worth in the San Francisco market seven millions six hundred thousand dollars in gold coin. In the early days a poverty-stricken Mexican who lived in a canyon directly back of Virginia City, had a stream of water as large as a man's wrist trickling from the hill-side on his premises. The Ophir Company segregated a hundred feet of their mine and traded it to him for the stream of water. The hundred feet proved to be the richest part of the entire mine ; four years after the swap, its market value (including its mill) was $1,500,000. An individual who owned twenty feet in the Ophir mine before its great riches were revealed to men, traded it for a horse, and a very sorry looking brute he was, too. A year or so afterward, when Ophir stock went up to $3,000 a foot, this A TELEGRAPH OPERATOR. 323 man, who had not a cent, used to say he was the most startling example of magnificence and misery the world had ever seen — because he was able to ride a sixty-thousand-dollar horse — yet could not scrape up cash enough to buy a saddle, and was obliged to borrow one or ride bareback. He said if fortune were to give him another sixty- thousand-dollar horse it would ruin him. A youth of nineteen, who was a telegraph operator in Virginia on a salary of a hundred dollars a month, and who, when he could not make out German names in the list of San Fran- cisco steamer arrivals, used to ingeniously se- lect and supply substi- tutes for them out of an old Berlin city directory, made himself rich by watching the mining telegrams that passed through his hands and buying and sell- ing stocks accordingly, through a friend in San Francisco. Once when a private dispatch was sent from Virginia an- nouncing a rich strike in a prominent mine and advising that the matter be kept secret till a large amount of the stock could be secured, he bought forty "feet" of the stock at twenty dollars a foot, and afterward sold half of it at eight hundred dollars a foot and the rest at double that figure. Within three months he was worth $150,000, and had resigned his telegraphic position. Another telegraph operator who had been discharged by the company for divulging the secrets of the office, agreed MAGNIFICENCE AND MISERY. 324 A HUNDRED DOLLAR INVESTMENT. with a moneyed man in San Francisco to furnish him the result of a great Virginia mining lawsuit within an hour after its private reception by the parties to it in San Francisco. For this he was to have a large percentage of the profits on purchases and sales made on it by his fellow-conspirator. So he went, disguised as a teamster, to a little wayside telegraph office in the mountains, got acquainted with the operator, and sat in the office day after day, smoking his pipe, complaining that his team was fagged out and unable to travel — and mean- time listening to the dispatches as they passed clicking through the machine from Yirginia. Finally the private dispatch an- nouncing the result of the lawsuit sped over the wires, and as soon as he heard it he telegraphed his friend in San Francisco : " Am tired waiting. Shall sell the team and go home." It was the signal agreed upon. The word " waiting " left out, would have signified that the suit had gone the other way. The mock teamster's friend picked up a deal of the mining stock, at low figures, before the news became public, and a fortune was the result. For a long time after one of the great Yirginia mines had been incorporated, about fifty feet of the original location were still in the hands of a man who had never signed the incorpo- ration papers. The stock became very valuable, and every efibrt was made to find this man, but he had disappeared. Once it was heard that he was in New York, and one or two speculators went east but failed to find him. Once the news came that he was in the Bermudas, and straightway a specu- lator or two hurried east and sailed for Bermuda — but he was not there. Finally he was heard of in Mexico, and a friend of his, a bar-keeper on a salary, scraped together a little money and sought him out, bought his " feet " for a hundred dollars, returned and sold the property for $75,000. But why go on ? The traditions of Silverland are filled with instances like these, and I would never get through enu- merating them were I to attempt do it. I only desired to give, the reader an idea of a peculiarity of the "flush times" which I could not' present so strikingly in any other way, and which » NEVADA NABOBS IN NEW YORK. 325 some mention of was necessary to a realizing comprehension of the time and the country. I was personally acquainted with the majority of the nabobs I have referred to, and so, for old acquaintance sake, I have shifted their occupations and experiences around in such a way as to keep the Pacific public from recognizing these once notorious men. No longer notorious, for the majority of them have drifted back into poverty and obscurity again. In Nevada there used to be current the story of an adven- ture of two of her nabobs, which may or may not have occurred. I give it for what it is worth : Col. Jim had seen somewhat of the world, and knew more or less of its ways ; but Col. Jack was from the back settle- ments of the States, had led a life of arduous toil, and had never seen a city. These two, blessed with sudden wealth, projected a visit to New York, — Col. Jack to see the sights, and Col. Jim to guard his unsophistication from misfortune. They reached San Francisco in the night, and sailed in the morning. Arrived in New York, Col. Jack said : " I've heard tell of carriages all my life, and now I mean to have a ride in one ; I don't care what it costs. Come along." They stepped out on the sidewalk, and Col. Jim called a stylish barouche. But Col. Jack said : " JYo, sir ! None of your cheap- John turn-outs for me. I'm here to have a good time, and money ain't any object. I mean to have the nobbiest rig that's going. Now here comes the very trick. Stop that yaller one with the pictures on it — don't you fret — I'll stand all the expenses myself." So Col. Jim stopped an empty omnibus, and they got in. Said Col. Jack : " Ain't it gay, though? Oh, no, I reckon not! Cush- ions, and windows, and pictures, till you can't rest. What would the boys say if they could see us cutting a swell like this in New York ? By George, I wish they could see us." Then he put his head out of the window, and shouted to the driver : 326 "CHARTERED SHEBANG." " Say, Johnny, this suits nne ! — suits yours truly, you bet, you ! I want this shebang all day. I'm on it, old man ! Let 'em out ! Make 'em go ! We'll make it all right with you, sonny ! " The driver passed his hand through the strap-hole, and tap- ped for his fare — it was before the gongs came into common use. Col. Jack took the hand, and shook it cordially. He said: "You twig me, old pard! All right between gents. Smell of that, and see how you like it ! " And he put a twenty-dollar gold piece in the driver's hand. After a moment the driver said he could not make change. " Bother the change ! Ride it out. Put it in your pocket." Then to Col. Jim, with a sounding slap on his thigh: "AinH it style, though ? Hanged if I don't hire this thing every day for a week." The omnibus stopped, and a young lady got in. Col. Jack stared a moment, then nudged Col. Jim with his elbow : "Don't say a word," he whispered. "Let her ride, if she wants to. Gracious, there's room enough." The young lady got out her porte-monnaie, and handed her fare to Col. Jack. "What's this for?" said he. " Give it to the driver, please." "Take back your money, madam. We can't allow it. A FRIENDLY DRIVER. A FINE RIDE ON BROADWAY. 327 You're welcome to ride here as long as you please, but this she- bang's chartered, and we can't let you pay a cent." The girl shrunk into a corner, bewildered. An old lady with a basket climbed in, and proffered her fare. " Excuse me," said Col. Jack. " You're perfectly welcome here, madam, but we can't allow you to pay. Set right down there, mum, and don't you be the least uneasy. Make your- self just as free as if you was in your own turn-out." Within two minutes, three gentlemen, two fat women, and a couple of children, entered. " Come right along, friends," said Col. Jack ; " don't mind us. This is a free blow-out." Then he whispered to Col. Jim, " New York ain't no sociable place, I don't reckon — it ain't no name for it ! " He resisted every effort to pass fares to the driver, and made everybody cordially welcome. The situation dawned on the people, and they pocketed their money, and delivered themselves up to covert enjoyment of the episode. Half a dozen more passengers entered. " Oh, there's plenty of room," said Col. Jack. " Walk right in, and make yourselves at home. A blow-out ain't worth any- thing as a blow-out, unless a body has company." Then in a whisper to Col. Jim : " But ainH these New Yorkers friendly ? And ain't they cool about it, too ? Icebergs ain't anywhere. I reckon they'd tackle a hearse, if it was going their way." More passengers got in ; more yet, and still more. Both seats were filled, and a file of men were standing up, holding on to the cleats overhead. Parties with baskets and bundles were climbing up on the roof. Half-suppressed laughter rip- pled up from all sides. ASTONISHES THE NATIVES. 32S NEW YORKERS BECOME SOCIABLE. " Well, for clean, cool, out-and-out cheek, if this don't bang anything that ever I saw, I'm an Injun ! " whispered^Col. Jack. A Chinaman crowded his way in. " I weaken ! " said Col. Jack. " Hold on, driver ! Keep your seats, ladies and gents. Just make yourselves free — everything's paid for. Driver, rustle these folks around as long as they're a mind to go — friends of ours, you know. Take them everywheres — and if you want more money, come COL. JACK "WEAKENS to the St. Nicholas, and we'll make it all right. Pleasant journey to you, ladies and gents — go it just as long as you please — it shan't cost you a cent ! " The two comrades got out, and Col. Jack said : " Jimmy, it's the sociablest place / ever saw. The China- man waltzed in as comfortable as anybody. If we'd staid awhile, I reckon we'd had some niggers. B' George, we'll have to barricade our doors to-night, or some of these ducks will be trying to sleep with us." CHAPTEE XLVII. SOMEBODY has said that in order to know a community, one must observe the style of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with most ceremony. I can- not say which class we buried with most eclat in our "flush times," the distinguished public benefactor or the distinguished rough — possibly the two chief grades or grand divisions of society honored their illustrious dead about equally; and hence, no doubt the philosopher I have quoted from would have needed to see two representative funerals in Virginia before forming his estimate of the people. There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was a representative citizen. He had "killed his man" — not in his own quarrel, it is true, but in defence of a stranger unfairly beset by numbers. He had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of a dashing helpmeet whom he could have discarded without the formality of a divorce. He had held a high position in the fire department and been a very Warwick in politics. When he died there was great lamentation throughout the town, but especially in the vast bottom-stratum of society. On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body, cut his throat, °nd jumped out of a four-story window and broken his neck — and after due delib- eration, the jury, sad and tearful, but with intelligence un- blinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death " by the visitation of God." What could the world do without juries ? Prodigious preparations were made for the funeral. All the vehicles in town were hired, all the saloons put in mourn- 330 SCOTTY BRIGGS THE COMMITTEEMAN. ing, all the municipal and fire-company flags Imng at half-mast, and all the firemen ordered to muster in uniform and bring their machines duly draped in black. Now — let us remark in parenthesis — as all the peoples of the earth had representative adventurers in the Silverland, and as each adventurer had brought the slang of his nation or his locality with him, the combination made the slang of Nevada the richest and the most infinitely varied and copious that had ever existed any- where in the world, perhaps, except in the mines of California in the " early days." Slang was the language of Nevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be understood. Such phrases as " You bet ! " " Oh, no, I reckon not ! " " No Irish need apply," and a hundred others, became so common as to fall from the lips of a speaker unconsciously — and very often when they did not touch the subject under discussion find consequently failed to mean anything. After Buck Fanshaw's inquest, a meeting of the short- haired brotherhood was held, for nothing can be done on the Pacific coast without a public meeting and an expression of sentiment. Regretful resolutions were passed and various committees appointed ; among others, a committee of one was deputed to call on the minister, a fragile, gentle ,spirituel new fledgling from an Eastern theological seminary, and as yet un- acquainted with the ways of the mines. The committeeman, "Scotty" Briggs, made his visit; and in after days it was worth something to hear the minister tell about it. Scotty was a stalwart rough, whose customary suit, when on weighty official business, like committee work, was a fire helmet, flam- ing red flannel shirt, patent leather belt with spanner and revolver attached, coat hung over arm, and pants stufl'ed into boot tops. He formed something of a contrast to the pale theological student. It is fair to say of Scotty, however, in passing, that he had a warm heart, and a strong love for his friends, and never entered into a quarrel when he could rea- sonably keep out of it. Indeed, it was commonly said that whenever one of Scotty' s fights was investigated, it always turned out that it had originally been no affair of his, but that out of native goodheartedness he had dropped in of his own INTERVIEW WITH THE CLERGYMAN. 331 accord to help the man who was getting the worst of it. He and Buck Fanshaw were bosom friends, for years, and had often taken adventurous " pot-luck" together. On one occa- sion, they had thrown off their coats and taken the weaker side in a fight among strangers, and after gaining a hard-earned victory, turned and found that the men they were helping had deserted early, and not only that, but had stolen their coats and made off with them ! But to return to Scotty's visit to the minister. He was on a sorrowful mission, now, and his face was the picture of woe. Being admitted to the presence he sat down before the clergyman, placed his fire-hat on an unfinished manuscript sermon under the minister's nose, took from it a red silk handkerchief, wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of dismal impressiveness, explanatory of his business. COMMITTEEMAN AND MINISTER. He choked, and even shed tears ; but with an effort he mastered his voice and said in lugubrious tones : " Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door ? " " Am I the — pardon me, I believe I do not understand ? " With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined : 332 SCOTTY CAN'T PLAT HIS HAND. " Why you see we are in a bit of trouble, and the boys thought maybe you would give us a lift, if we'd tackle you — that is, if I've got the rights of it and you are the head clerk of the doxology-works next door." "lam the shepherd in charge of the flock whose fold is next door." "The which?" " The spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose sanctuary adjoins these premises." Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and then sai'd : " You ruther hold over me, pard. I reckon I can't call that hand. Ante and pass the buck." " How ? I beg pardon. What did I understand you to say?" " Well, you've ruther got the bulge on me. Or maybe we've both got the bulge, somehow. You don't smoke me and I don't smoke you. You see, one of the boys has passed in his checks and we want to give him a good send-off, and so the thing I'm on now is to roust out somebody to jerk a little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsome." "My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Can- not you simplify them in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumula- tions of metaphor and allegory ? " Another pause, and more reflection. Then, said Scotty : " I'll have to pass, I judge." "How?" " You've raised me out, pard." " I still fail to catch your meaning." "Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me — that's the idea. I can't neither trump nor follow suit." The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed. Scotty leaned his head on his hand and gave himself up to thought. Presently his face came up, sorrowful but confident. THE MINISTER A LITTLE MIXED. 333 " I've got it now, so's you can savvy," he said. " What we want is a gospel-sharp. See % " "A what ? " " Gospel-sharp. Parson." " Oh ! Why did you not say so before ? I am a clergy- man — a parson." " Now you talk ! You see my blind and straddle it like a man. Put it there ! " — extending a brawny paw, which closed over the minister's small hand and gave it a shake indicative of fraternal sympathy and fervent gratification. " Now we're all right, pard. Let's start fresh. Don't you mind my snuffling a little — becuz we're in a power of trouble. You see, one of the boys has gone up the flume— 1 " "Gone where?" " Up the flume — throwed up the sponge, you understand." " Thrown up the sponge ? " " Yes— kicked the bucket— " " Ah — has departed to that mysterious country from whose oourne no traveler returns." " Return ! I reckon not. Why pard, he's dead ! " " Yes, I understand." " Oh, you do ? Well I thought maybe you might be get- ting tangled some more. Yes, you see he's dead again — " " Again f Why, has he ever been dead before ? " " Dead before ? No ! Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a cat ? But you bet you he's awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I'd never seen this day. I don't want no better friend than Buck Fanshaw. I knowed him by the back ; and when I know a man and like him, I freeze to him — you hear me. Take him all round, pard, there never was a bullier man in the mines. No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw to go back on a friend. But it's all up, you know, it's all up. It ain't no use. They've scooped him." " Scooped him ? " "Yes — death has. Well, well, well, we've got to give him up. Yes indeed. It's a kind of a hard world, after all, ainH it % But pard, he was a rustler ! You ought to seen him get started once. He was a bully boy with a glass eye ! Just spit 334 BEGINNING TO SEE. in his face and give him room according to his strength, and it was just beautiful to see him peel and go in. He was the worst son of a thief that ever drawed breath. Pard, he was on it ! He was on it bigger than an Injun ! " "On it? On what?" " On the shoot. On the shoulder. On the fight, you un- derstand. He didn't give a continental for Washer and Ironer" ; "Hong Wo, ^ylj Washer"; "Sam Sing & Ah Hop, Washing." F The house servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly Chinamen. There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so em- J%*- ployed. Chinamen make good house servants, — -^Y being quick, obedient, patient, quick to learn S \^^, and tirelessly industrious. They do not need to be taught a thing twice, as a general thing. They are imitative. If a Chinaman were to see his master break up a centre table, in a passion, and jJt* kindle a fire with it, that Chinaman would be 'j ^ likely to resort to the furniture for fuel forever afterward. All Chinamen can read, write and cipher with easy facility — pity but all our petted voters could. In California they rent little patches of ground and do a deal of gardening. They will raise surprising crops of vegetables on a sand pile. They waste nothing. What is rub- bish to a Christian, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way or another. He gathers up all the old oyster and sardine cans that white people throw away, and pro- cures marketable tin and solder from them by melting. CHINESE AT HOME. 393 IMITATION. He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure. In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men have abandoned as ex- hausted and worth- less — and then the officers come down on him once a month with an exorbitant swindle to which the legislature has given the broad, general name of " foreign " mining tax, but it is usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen. This swindle has in some cases been repeated once or twice on the same victim in the course of the same month — but the public treasury was not additionally enriched by it, probably. Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence — they worship their departed ancestors, in fact. Hence, in China, a man's front yard, back yard, or any other part of his premises, is made his family burying ground, in order that he may visit the graves at any and all times. Therefore that huge empire is one mighty cemetery ; it is ridged and wringled from its centre to its circumference with graves — and inasmuch as every foot of ground must be made to do its utmost, in China, lest the swarm- ing population suffer for food, the very graves are cultivated and yield a harvest, custom holding this to be no dishonor to the dead. Since the departed are held in such worshipful reverence, a Chinaman cannot bear that any indignity be offered the places where they sleep. Mr. Burlingame said that herein lay China's bitter opposition to railroads ; a road could not be built anywhere in the empire without disturbing the graves of their ancestors or friends. 394 CHINESE IMMIGRATION. A Chinaman hardly believes he could enjoy the hereafter except his body lay in his beloved China ; also, he desires to receive, himself, after death, that worship with which he has honored his dead that preceded him. Therefore, if he visits a foreign country, he makes arrangements to have his bones re- turned to China in case he dies ; if he hires to go to a foreign country on a labor contract, there is always a stipulation that his body shall be taken back to China if he dies ; if the govern- ment sells a gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five- year term, it is specified in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China in case of death. On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies home when they die. The See Yup Company is held to be the largest of these. The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousand members on the coast. Its head- quarters are at San Francisco, where it has a costly temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regal state in seclu- sion and cannot be approached by common humanity), and a numerous priesthood. In it I was shown a register of its mem- bers, with the dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked. Every ship that sails from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinese corpses — or did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingenious refinement of Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neat underhanded way of deterring Chinese immigration. The bill was offered, whether it passed or not. It is my impression that it passed. There was another bill — it became a law — compelling every incoming Chinaman to be vaccinated on the wharf and pay a duly ap- pointed quack (no decent doctor would defile himself with guch legalized robbery) ten dollars for it. As few importers of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, the law- makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese immigration. What the Chinese quarter of Yirginia was like — or, indeed, what the Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is A VISIT TO CHINATOWN. 395 like — may be gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting for that paper : Chinatown. — Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip through our Chinese quarter the other night. The Chinese have built their portion of the city to suit themselves ; and as they keep neither carriages nor wagons, their streets are not wide enough, as a general thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles. At ten o'clock at night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory. In every little cooped-up, dingy cavern of a hut, faint with the odor of burning Josh-lights and with nothing to see the gloom by save the sickly, guttering tallow candle, were two or three yellow, long-tailed vagabonds, coiled up on a sort of short truckle-bed, smoking opium, motion- less and with their lustreless eyes turned inward from excess of satisfaction —or rather the recent smoker looks thus, immediately after having passed the pipe to his neighbor — for opium-smoking is a comfortless operation, and requires constant attention. A lamp sits on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker's mouth ; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a hole with putty ; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds to smoke — and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of the juices in the stem would wellnigh turn the stomach of a statue. John likes it, though ; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen whiffs, and then rolls over to dream, Heaven only knows what, for we could not imagine by looking at the soggy creature. Possibly in his visions he travels far away from the gross world and his regular washing, and feasts on succulent rats and birds'-nests in Paradise. Mr. Ah Sing keeps a general grocery and provision store at No. 13 Wang street. He lavished his hospitality upon our party in the friendliest way. He had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies, with un- pronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs, and which he offered to us in dainty little miniature wash-basins of porcelain. He offered us a mess of birds'-nests ; also, small, neat sausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had chosen to try, but we sus- pected that each link contained the corpse of a mouse, and therefore refrained. Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand articles of merchandise, curious to behold, impossible to imagine the uses of, and beyond our ability to describe. His ducks, however, and his eggs, we could understand ; the former were split open and flattened out like codfish, and came from China in that shape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste which kept them fresh and palatable through the long voyage. We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lottery scheme — in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way in vari- ous parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs a lottery, and the balance of the tribe " buck " at it. " Tom," who speaks faultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the Territorial Enterprise, when the 396 SPECIMEN BUSINESS MEN. establishment kept bachelor's hall two years ago, said that " Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one dollar hap, ketch um two tree hundred, sometime no ketch um anyting ; lottery like one man fight um seventy — may-be he whip, may -be he get whip heself, welly good." However, the percentage being sixty-nine against him, the chances are, as a general thing, that " ha CHINESE LOTTEKT. get whip heself." We could not see that these lotteries differed in any respect from our own, save that the figures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to succeed in telling " t'other from which ; " the man- ner of drawing is similar to ours. Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street. He sold us fans of white feathers, gorgeously ornamented ; perfumery that smelled like Lim- burger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stone unscratch- able with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted like the inner coat of a sea-shell* As tokens of his esteem, See Yup presented the party with gaudy plumes made of gold tinsel and trimmed with peacocks' feathers. We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial restaurants ; our com- rade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for their want of fem- inine reserve ; we received protecting Josh-lights from our hosts and " dick- *A peculiar species of the "jade-stone" — to a Chinaman peculiarly precious. ABUSE OF THE CHINESE. 397 ered " for a pagan God or two. Finally, we were impressed with the genius of a Chinese book-keeper ; he figured up his accounts on a machine like a grid- iron with buttons strung on its bars ; the different rows represented units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He fingered them with incredible rapidity — in fact, he pushed them from place to place as fast as a musical professor's fingers travel over the keys of a piano. They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explana- tion that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it — they and their children ; they, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, like- wise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America. CHAPTER LV. I BEGAN to get tired of staying in one place so long. There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to Carson to report the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races and pumpkin-shows once in three months ; (they had got to raising pumpkins and potatoes in Washoe Yalley, and of course one of the first achievements of the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar Agricultural Fair to show off forty dollars' worth of those pumpkins in — however, the territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the " asylum "). I wanted to see San Francisco. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted — I did not know what I wanted. I had the " spring fever" and wanted a change, principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had framed a State Constitu- tion ; nine men out of every ten wanted an office ; I believed that these gentlemen would "treat" the moneyless and the irresponsible among the population into adopting the consti- tution and thus wellnigh killing the country (it could not well carry such a load as a State government, since it had nothing to tax that could stand a tax, for undeveloped mines could not, and there were not fifty developed ones in the land, there was but little realty to tax, and it did seem as if nobody was ever going to think of the simple salvation of inflicting a money penalty on murder). I believed that a State government would destroy the " flush times," and I wanted to get away. I believed that the mining stocks I had on hand would soon be worth $100,000, and thought if they reached that before the Constitution was adopted, I would sell out and make myself AN OLD SCHOOLMATE. secure from the crash the change of government was going to bring. I considered $100,000 sufficient to go home with decently, though it was but a small amount compared to what I had been expecting to return with. I felt rather down- hearted about it, but I tried to comfort myself with the re- flection that with such a sum I could not fall into want.. About this time a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen since boyhood, came tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty. The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry, bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless hat, and so generally and so extrava- gantly dilapidated that he could have " taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself," as he pleasantly remarked. He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars — twenty-six to take him to San Francisco, and twenty for something else ; to buy some soap with, maybe, for he needed it. I found I had but little more than the amount wanted, in my pock- et ; so I stepped in and bor- rowed forty-six dollars of a banker (on twenty days' time, without the formality of a note), and gave it him, rather than walk half a block to the office, where I had some specie laid up. If anybody had told me that it would take me two years to pay back that forty-six dollars to the banker (for I did not expect it of the Prodigal, and was not disappointed), I would have felt injured. And bo would the banker. AN OLD FRIEND. 400 IN THE EDITORIAL CHAIR. I wanted a change. I wanted variety of some kind. It came. Mr. Goodman went away for a week and left me the post of chief editor. It destroyed me. The first day, I wrote my "leader" in the forenoon. The second day, I had no subject and put it off till the afternoon. The third day I put it off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out of the "American Cyclopedia," that steadfast friend of the editor, all over this land. The fourth day I " fooled around " till midnight, and then fell back on the Cyclopedia again. The fifth day I cudgeled my brain till midnight, and then kept the press waiting while I penned some bitter personalities on six different people. The sixth day I labored in anguish till far into the night and brought forth — nothing. The paper went to press without an editorial. The seventh day I re- signed. On the eighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands — my personalities had borne fruit. Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you ; it is easy to clip selections from other papers ; it is easy to string out a correspondence from any locality ; but it is unspeakable hardship to write editorials. Subjects are the trouble — the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag — think, and worry and suffer — all the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled. Only give the editor a subject ; , and his work is done — it is no trouble to write it up ; but fancy how you would feel if you had to pump your brains dry every day in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year. It makes one low spirited simply to think of it. The matter that each editor of a daily paper in America writes in the course of a year would fill from four to eight bulky volumes like this book ! Fancy what a library an editor's work would make, after twenty or thirty years' service. Yet people often marvel that Dickens, Scott, Bulwer, Dumas, etc., have been able to produce so many books. If these authors had wrought as voluminously as newspaper editors do, the result would be something to marvel at, indeed. How editors can continue this tremendous labor, this exhausting consump- ALMOST AN AGREEABLE OFFER. 401 tion of brain fibre (for their work is creative, and not a mere mechanical laying-up of facts, like reporting), day after day and year after year, is incomprehensible. Preachers take two months' holiday in midsummer, for they find that to produce two sermons a week is wearing, in the long run. In truth it must be so, and is so ; and therefore, how an editor can take from ten to twenty texts and build upon them from ten to twenty painstaking editorials a week and keep it up all the year round, is farther beyond comprehension than ever. Ever since I survived my week as editor, I have found at least one pleasure in any newspaper that comes to my hand ; it is in admiring the long columns of editorial, and wondering to myself how in the mischief he did it ! Mr. Goodman's return relieved me of employment, unless I chose to become a reporter again. I could not do that ; I could not serve in the ranks after being General of the army. So I thought I would depart and go abroad into the world somewhere. Just at this juncture, Dan, my associate in the reportorial department, told me, casually, that two citizens had been trying to persuade him to go with them to New York and aid in selling a rich silver mine which they had discovered and secured in a new mining district in our neighborhood. He said they offered to pay his expenses and give him one third of the proceeds of the sale. He had refused to go. It was the very opportunity I wanted. I abused him for keeping so quiet about it, and not mentioning it sooner. He said it had not occurred to him that I would like to go, and so he had recommended them to apply to Marshall, the reporter of the other paper. I asked Dan if it was a good, honest mine, and no swindle. He said the men had shown him nine tons of the rock, which they had got out to take to New York, and he could cheerfully say that he had seen but little rock in Nevada that was richer ; and moreover, he said that they had secured a tract of valuable timber and a mill-site, near the mine. My first idea was to kill Dan. But I changed my mind, notwith- standing I was so angry, for I thought maybe the chance was not yet lost. Dan said it was by no means lost ; that the men 26f 402 DEPARTURE FROM VIRGINIA CITY. were absent at the mine again, and would not be in Virginia to leave for the East for some ten days ; that they had re- quested him to do the talking to Marshall, and he had promised that he would either secure Marshall or somebody else for them by the time they got back ; he would now say nothing to anybody till they returned, and then fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them. It was splendid. I went to bed all on fire with excite- ment ; for nobody had yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the field was white for the sickle. I felt that such a mine as the one described by Dan would bring a princely sum in New York, and sell without delay or difficulty. I could not sleep, my fancy so rioted through its castles in the air. It was the " blind lead " come again. Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat attending departures of old citizens, — for if you have only half a dozen friends out there they will make noise for a hundred rather than let you seem to go away neglected and unregretted — and Dan promised to keep strict watch for the men that had the mine to sell. The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurred just as we were about to start. A very seedy looking vagabond passenger got out of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silver bricks was thrown in. He was standing on the pavement, when an awkward express employe, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled and let it fall on the bummer's foot. He instantly dropped on the ground and began to howl in the most heart-breaking way. A sympathizing crowd gathered around and were going to pull his boot off; but he screamed louder than ever and they desisted ; then he fell to gasping, and between the gasps ejacu- lated " Brandy ! for Heaven's sake, brandy ! " They poured half a pint down him, and it wonderfully restored and com- forted him. Then he begged the people to assist him to the stage, which was done. The express people urged him to have a doctor at their expense, but he declined, and said that if he only had a little brandy to take along with him, to soothe ONE LITTLE INCIDENT. 403 Lis paroxyms of pain when they came on, he would be grate* fill and content. He was quickly supplied with two bottles, and we drove off. He was so smiling and happy after that, that I could not refrain from asking him how he could possibly be so comfortable _ _^_ _ with a crushed foot. "Well," said he, "I hadn't had a drink for twelve hours, and hadn't a cent to my name. I was most perishing — and so, when that duffer dropped that hundred-pounder on my foot, I see my chance. Got a cork leg, you know ! " and he pulled up his pan- taloons and proved it. He was as drunk as a lord all day long, and full of chuck- lings over his timely ingenuity. One drunken man necessarily re- minds one of an- other. I once heard a gentleman tell about an incident which he witnessed in a Californian bar-room. He entitled it " Ye Modest Man Taketh a Drink." It was nothing but a bit of acting, but it seemed to me a perfect rendering, and worthy of Toodles himself. The modest man, tolerably far gone with beer and other matters, enters a saloon (twenty-five cents is the price for anything and everything, and specie the only money used) and lays down a half dollar ; calls for whiskey and drinks it ; FAREWELL AND ACCIDENT. 404 ANOTHER ANECDOTE, the bar-keeper makes change and lays the quarter in a wet place on the counter ; the modest man fumbles at it with nerveless fingers, but it slips and the water holds it ; he contem- plates it, and tries again ; same result ; observes that people are interested in what he is at, blushes ; fumbles at the quarter again — blushes — puts his forefinger carefully, slowly down, to make sure of his aim — pushes the coin toward the bar-keeper, and says with a sigh : " ('ic !) Gimme a cigar ! " Naturally, another gentleman present told about another drunken man. He said he reeled toward home late at night ; made a mistake and en- tered the wrong gate ; thought he saw a dog on the stoop ; and it was — an iron one. He stopped and considered ; wondered if it was a dangerous dog ; ventured to say " Be (hie) begone ! " No effect. Then he approached warily, and adopted conciliation ; up his lips and tried to whistle, but failed ; still approached, saying, " Poor dog !— doggy, doggy, doggy ! — poor doggy-dog ! " Got up on the stoop, still petting with fond names ; till master of the ad- vantages ; then exclaimed, " Leave, you thief ! " — planted a vindictive kick in his ribs, and went head-over- heels overboard, of course. A pause ; a sigh or two of pain, and then a remark in a reflective voice : "Awful solid dog. What could he ben eating? ('id) Eocks, p'raps. Such animals is dangerous. ' At's what / say — they're dangerous. If a man — ('ic!)— if a man wants to feed a dog on rocks, let him/<^ him on rocks ; 'at's all right; GIMMK A CIGAR! " AN INCIDENT OF MOUNT DAVIDSON. 405 but let him keep him at home — not have him layin' round pro- miscuous, where ('ic !) where people's liable to stumble over him when they ain't noticin' ! " It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny- flag (it was thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a lady's handkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson, two thousand feet above Virginia's roofs, and felt that doubtless I was bidding a permanent farewell to a city which had afforded me the most vigorous enjoyment of life I had ever experienced. And this reminds me of an incident which the dullest memory Virginia could boast at the time it happened must vividly recall, at times, till its possessor dies. Late one summer afternoon we had a rain shower. That was astonishing enough, in itself, to set the whole town buzzing, for it only rains (during a week or two weeks) in the winter in Nevada, and even then not enough at a time to make it worth while for any merchant to keep umbrellas for sale. But the rain was not the chief wonder. It only lasted five or ten minutes ; while the people were still talking about it all the heavens gathered to themselves a dense blackness as of mid- night. All the vast eastern front of Mount Davidson, over- looking the city, put on such a funereal gloom that only the nearness and solidity of the mountain made its outlines even faintly distinguishable from the dead blackness of the heavens they rested against. This unaccustomed sight turned all eyes toward the mountain ; and as they looked, a little tongue of rich golden flame was seen waving and quivering in the heart of the midnight, away up on the extreme summit ! In a few minutes the streets were packed with people, gazing with hardly an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the brooding world of darkness. It flicked like a candle-flame, and looked no larger ; but with such a background it was wonderfully bright, small as it was. It was the flag ! — though no one sus- pected it at first, it seemed so like a supernatural visitor of some kind — a mysterious messenger of good tidings, some were fain to believe. It was the nation's emblem transfigured by the departing rays of a sun that was entirely palled from 406 THE WONDERFUL VISITOR. view ; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broad panorama of mountain ranges and deserts. Not even upon the staff of the flag— for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now untouched by the light and undistm- euishable in the gloom. For a whole hour the weird visitor winked and burned in its lofty solitude, and still the thousands of uplifted eyes watched it with fascinated interest. How the people were wrought up ! The superstition grew apace that this was a mystic courier come with great news from the war —the poetry of the idea excusing and commending it— and on THE HERALD OE GLAD NEWS. it spread, from heart to heart, from lip to lip and from street to street, till there was a general impulse to have out the military and welcome the hright waif with a salvo of artallery I And all that time one sorely tried man, the telegraph operator sworn to official secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue with a silence that was like to rend them ; ior he and he only, of all the speculating multitude, knew the great GOOD NEWS FROM THE EAST. 407 things this sinking sun had seen that day in the east — Yicks- burg fallen, and the Union arms victorious at Gettysburg ! But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest revealment of eastern news till a day after its publication in the California papers, the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would have been saluted and re-saluted, that memorable even- ing, as long as there was a charge of powder to thunder with ; the city would have been illuminated, and every man that had any respect for himself would have got drunk, — as was the custom of the country on all occasions of public moment. Even at this distant day I cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunity without regret. What a time we might have had ! OHAPTEE LVI. ~\T7"E rumbled over the plains and valleys, climbed the V V Sierras to the clouds, and looked down upon summer- clad California. And I will remark here, in passing, that all scenery in California requires distance to give it its highest charm. The mountains are imposing in their sublimity and their majesty of form and altitude, from any point of view — but one must have distance to soften their ruggedness and en- rich their tintings ; a Californian forest is best at a little dis- tance, for there is a sad poverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly of one monotonous femily — redwood, pine, spruce, fir — and so, at a near view there is a wearisome sameness of attitude in their rigid arms, stretched downward and outward in one continued and reiterated appeal to all men to " Sh ! — don't say a word ! — you might disturb somebody ! " Close at hand, too, there is a reliefless and relentless smell of pitch and turpentine; there is a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and complaining foliage ; one walks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow bark and dead spines of the foliage till he feels like a wandering spirit bereft of a footfall ; he tires of the end- less tufts of needles and yearns for substantial, shapely leaves ; he looks for moss and grass to loll upon, and finds none, for where there is no bark there is naked clay and dirt, enemies to pensive musing and clean apparel. Often a grassy plain in California, is what it should be, but often, too, it is best contemplated at a distance, because although its grass blades are tall, they stand up vindictively straight and self-sufficient, and are unsociably wide apart, with uncomely spots of barren sand between. One of the queerest things I know of, is to hear tourists EASTERN LANDSCAPES. 409 from " the States " go into ecstasies over the loveliness of " ever-bloommg California." And they always do go into that sort of ecstasies. But perhaps they would modify them if they knew how old Californians, with the memory full upon them of the dust-covered and questionable summer greens of Cali- i fornian "verdure," stand astonished, and filled with worship- ping admiration,in the presence of the lavish richness, the brilliant green, the infinite freshness, the spend- thrift variety of form and species and foli- age that make an Eastern landscape a vision of Paradise it- self. The idea of a man falling into rap- tures over grave and sombre California, when that man has seen New England's meadow-expanses and her maples, oaks and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire, or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comes very near being funny — would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic. ~No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful. The tropics are not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They seem beautiful at first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by. Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that has four well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony. Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual, harmo- nious development, its culminating graces — and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train. And I think AN EASTERN LANDSCAPE. ', 410 CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO. that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest. San Francisco, a truly fascinating city to live in, is A VARIABLE CLIMATE. stately and handsome at a fair distance, but close at hand one notes that the architecture is mostly old-fashioned, many streets are made up of decaying, smoke-grimed, wooden houses, and the barren sand-hills toward the outskirts obtrude themselves too prominently. Even the kindly climate is some- times pleasanter when read about than personally experienced, for a lovely, cloudless sky wears out its welcome by and by, and then when the longed for rain does come it stays. Even the playful earthquake is better contemplated at a dis — However there are varying opinions about that. The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardly changes at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer and Winter, and never use & mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing. You wear black broadcloth — if you have it — in August and Janu- ary, just the same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month than the other. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is as pleasant a climate as could well be con- trived, take it all around, and is doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world. The wind blows there a good deal in the ITS CLIMATE AND SEASONS. 411 Summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, if you choose — three or four miles away — it does not blow there. It has only snowed twice in San Francisco in nineteen years, and then it only remained on the ground long enough to astonish the children, and set them to wondering what the feathery stuff was. During eight months of the year, straight along, the skies are bright and cloudless, and never a drop of rain falls. But when the other four months come along, you will need to go and steal an umbrella. Because you will require it. ~Not just one day, but one hundred and twenty days in hardly varying succession. When you want to go visiting, or attend church, or the theatre, you never look up at the clouds to see whether it is likely to rain or not — you look at the almanac. If it is Winter, it will rain — and if it is Summer, it won't rain, and you cannot help it. You never need a lightning-rod, because it never thunders and it never lightens. And after you have listened for six or eight weeks, every night, to the dismal monotony of those quiet rains, you will wish in your heart the thunder would leap and crash and roar along those drowsy skies once, and make everything alive — you will wish the prisoned lightnings would cleave the dull firmament asunder and light it with a blinding glare for one little instant. You would give anything to hear the old familiar thunder again and see the lightning strike somebody. And along in the Summer, when you have suffered about four months of lustrous, pitiless sunshine, you are ready to go down on your knees and plead for rain — hail — snow — thunder and lightning — anything to break the monotony — you will take an earth- quake, if you cannot do any better. And the chances are that you'll get it, too. San Francisco is built on sand hills, but they are prolific sand hills. They yield a generous vegetation. All the rare flowers which people in " the States " rear with such patient care in parlor flower-pots and green-houses, flourish luxu- riantly in the open air there all the year round. Calla lilies, all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, moss roses — I do not know the names of a tenth part of them. I only know that while 412 THE HOTTEST PLACE ON EARTH. New Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow, Californians are burdened with banks and drifts of flowers, if they only keep their hands off and let them grow. And I have heard that they have also that rarest and most curious of all the flowers, the beautiful Espiritu Santo, as the Spaniards call it — or flower of the Holy Spirit — though I thought it grew only in Central America — down on the Isthmus. In its cup is the daintiest little fac-simile of a dove, as pure as snow. The Spaniards have a superstitious reverence for it. The blossom has been conveyed to the States, submerged in ether ; and the bulb has been taken thither also, but every attempt to make it bloom after it arrived, has failed. I have elsewhere spoken of the endless Winter of Mono, California, and but this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco. Now if we travel a hundred miles in a straight line, we come to the eternal Summer of Sacramento. One never sees Summer-clothing or mosquitoes in San Francisco — but they can be found in Sacramento. Not always and unvaryingly, but about one hundred and forty-three months out of twelve years, perhaps. Flowers bloom there, always, the reader can easily believe — people suffer and sweat, and swear, morning, noon and night, and wear out their stanchest energies fanning themselves. It gets hot there, but if you go down to Fort Yuma you will find it hotter. Fort Yuma is probably the hottest place on earth. The thermometer stays at one hundred and twenty in the shade there all the time — except when it varies and goes higher. It is a U. S. military post, and its occupants get so used to the terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is a tradition (attributed to John Phenix*) that a very, very wicked soldier died there, once, and of course, went straight to the hottest corner of perdition, — and the next day he telegraphed hack for his blankets. There is no doubt about the truth of this statement — there can be no doubt about it. I have seen the place where that soldier used to board. In Sacramento it is fiery Summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries and ice-cream, and wear * It has been purloined by fifty different scribblers who were too poor to invent a fancy but not ashamed to steal one. — M. T. A PICTURE OF SUMMER AND WINTER. 413 white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen SACRAMENTO. THREE IIOURS AWAY. Donner Lake, seven thousand feet above the valley, among snow banks fifteen feet deep, and in the shadow of grand mountain peaks that lift their frosty crags ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. There is a transition for you I Where will you find another like it in the Western hemis- phere? And some of us have swept around snow- walled curves of the Pacific Railroad in that vicinity, six thousand feet above the sea, and looked down as the birds do, upon the deathless Summer of the Sacramento Valley, with its fruitful fields, its feathery foliage, its silver streams, all slumbering in the mellow haze of its enchanted atmosphere, and all infinitely softened and spiritualized by distance — a dreamy, exquisite glimpse of fairyland, made all the more charming and striking that it was caught through a forbidden gateway of ice and snow, and savage crags and precipices. CHAPTEE LVII. IT was in this Sacramento Yalley, just referred to, that a deal of the most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see, in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see such disfigure- ments far and wide over California — and in some such places, where only meadows and forests are visible — not a livinc creature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a sound, not even a whisper to disturb the Sabbath stillness — you will find it hard to believe that there stood at one time a fiercely-flourishing little city, of two thousand or three thousand souls, with its newspaper, fire company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank, hotels, noisy Fourth of July processions and speeches, gambling hells crammed with to- bacco smoke, profanity, and rough-bearded men of all nations and colors, with tables heaped With gold dust sufficient for the revenues of a German principality — streets crowded and rife with business — town lots worth four hundred dollars a front foot — labor, laughter, music, dancing, swearing, fighting, shoot- ing, stabbing — a bloody inquest and a man for breakfast every morning — everything that delights and adorns existence — all the appointments and appurtenances of a thriving and pros- perous and promising young city, — and now nothing is left of it all but a lifeless, homeless solitude. The men are gone, the houses have vanished, even the name of the place is for- gotten. In no other land, in modern times, have towns so CALIFORNIA — CHARACTER OF POPULATION. 415 absolutely died and disappeared, as in the old mining regions of California. It was a driving, vigorous, restless population in those days. It was a curious population. It was the only population of the kind that the world has ever seen gathered together, and it is not likely that the world will ever see its like again. For, observe, it was an assemblage of two hundred thousand young men — not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved weaklings, but stal- wart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of push and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute that goes to make up a peerless and magnificent manhood — the very pick and choice of the world's glorious ones. No women, no children, no gray and stooping veterans, — none but erect, bright-eyed, quick-moving, strong-handed young giants — the strangest population, the finest population, the most gallant host that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land. And where are they now? Scattered to the ends of the earth — or prematurely aged and decrepit — or shot or stabbed in street affrays — or dead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts — all gone, or nearly all — victims devoted upon the altar of the golden calf — the noblest holo- caust that ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is pitiful to think upon. It was a splendid population — for all the slow, sleepy, slug- gish-brained sloths staid at home — you never find that sort of people among pioneers — you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day — and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual, and says "Well, that is California all over." But they were rough in those times ! They fairly reveled in gold, whisky, fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeak- ably happy. The honest miner raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and what with the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn't a 416 A WOMAN! A WOMAN! cent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked their own bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed their own shirts — blue woollen ones ; and if a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For those people hated aristocrats. They had a particular and malignant animosity toward what they called a " biled shirt." It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society ! Men — only swarming hosts of stalwart men — nothing juvenile, noth- ing feminine, visible anywhere ! In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that rare and blessed spectacle, a woman ! Old "fetch her out. inhabitants tell how, in a certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was come ! They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the camping-ground — sign of emigrants from over the great plains. Everybody went down there, and a shout went up when an A DELIGHTED MINER. 417 actual, bona fide dress was discovered fluttering in the wind ! The male emigrant was visible. The miners said : " Fetch her out ! " He said : " It is my wife, gentlemen — she is sick — we have been robbed of money, provisions, everything, by the Indiana • — we want to rest." " Fetch her out ! We've got to see her ! " " But, gentlemen, the poor thing, she — " " Fetch her out ! " He " fetched her out," and they swung their hats and sent up three rousing cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and gazed at her, and touched her dress, and listened to her voice with the look of men who listened to a memory rather than a present reality — and then they collected twenty-five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man, and swung their hats again and gave three more cheers, and went home satisfied. Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer, and talked with his daughter, a young lady whose first experi- ence in San Francisco was an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as she was only two or three years old at the time. Her father said that, after landing from the ship, they were walking up the street, a servant lead- ing the party with the little girl in her arms. 27f WELL, IF IT AIN'T A CHILD And presently 418 WAITING FOR A TURN. a huge miner, bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly weapons — just down from a long campaign in the mountains, evidently — barred the way, stopped the servant, and stood gazing, with a face all alive with gratification and astonishment. Then he said, reverently : " Well, if it ain't a child ! " And then he snatched a little leather sack out of his pocket and said to the servant : " There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I'll give it to you to let me kiss the child ! " That anecdote is true. But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner-table, listening to that anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the privilege of kissing the same child, I would have been refused. Seventeen added years have far more than doubled the price. And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star City, in the Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long, post-office single file of miners, to patiently await my chance to peep through a crack in the cabin and get a sight of the splendid new sensation — a genuine, live Woman ! And at the end of half of an hour my turn came, and I put my eye to the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo, and tossing flap-jacks in a frying-pan with the other. And she was one hundred and sixty-five* years old, and hadn't a tooth in her head. * Being in calmer mood, now, I voluntarily knock off a hundred from that.— M. T. CHAPTER LVIIL FOR a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of existence — a butterfly idleness ; nothing to do, nobody to be responsible to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union. After the sage-brush and alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was Paradise to me. I lived at the best hotel, exhibited my clothes in the most conspicuous places, infested the opera, and learned to seem enraptured with music which oftener afflicted my ignorant ear than enchanted it, if I had had the vulgar honesty to confess it. However, I suppose I was not greatly worse than the most of my countrymen in that. I had longed to be a butterfly, and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polked and schottisched with a step peculiar to myself — and the kangaroo. In a word, I kept the due state of a man worth a hundred thousand dollars (pros- pectively,) and likely to reach absolute affluence when that silver- mine sale should be ultimately achieved in the East. I spent money with a free hand, and meantime watched the stock sales with an interested eye and looked to see what might happen in Nevada. Something very important happened. The property hold- ers of Nevada voted against the State Constitution ; but the folks who had nothing to lose were in the majority, and carried the measure over their heads. But after all it did not imme- diately look like a disaster, though unquestionably it was one 420 A GENERAL BREAKDOWN I hesitated, calculated the chances, and then concluded not to sell. Stocks went on rising ; speculation went mad ; bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, laborers, even the very washerwomen and servant girls, were putting up their earnings on silver stocks, and every sun that rose in tfle morning went down on pau- pers enriched and rich men beggared. What a gambling carnival it was! Gould and Curry soared to six thou- sand three hundred dollars a foot ! And then — all of a sud- THE GRACE OF A KANGAROO. den, OUt Went tllC bottom and everything and everybody went to ruin and destruc- tion ! The wreck was complete. The bubble scarcely left a microscopic moisture behind it. I was an early beggar and a thorough one. My hoarded stocks were not worth the paper they were printed on. I threw them all away. I, the cheer- ful idiot that had been squandering money like water, and thought myself beyond the reach of misfortune, had not now as much as fifty dollars when I gathered together my various debts and paid them. I removed from the hotel to a very pri- vate boarding house. I took a reporter's berth and went to work. I was not entirely broken in spirit, for I was building confidently on the sale of the silver mine in the east. But I could not hear from Dan. My letters miscarried or were not answered. One day I did not feel vigorous and remained away from the office. The next day I went down toward noon as usual, and MY FIRST EARTHQUAKE. 421 found a note on my desk which had been there twenty-four hours. It was signed " Marshall " — the Virginia reporter — and contained a request that I should call at the hotel and see him and a friend or two that night, as they would sail for the east in the morning. A postscript added that their errand was a big mining speculation ! I was hardly ever so sick , in my life. I abused myself for leaving Virginia and entrusting to another man a matter I ought to have attended to myself; I abused myself for remaining away from the office on the one day of all the year that I should have been there. And thus berating myself I trotted a mile to the steamer wharf and arrived just in time to be too late. The ship was in the stream and under way. I comforted myself with the thought that may be the specu- lation would amount to nothing — poor comfort at best — and then went back to my slavery, resolved to put up with my thirty-five dollars a week and forget all about it. A month afterward I enjoyed my first earthquake. It was one which was long called the "great" earth- quake, and is doubtless so distinguish- ed till this day. It was just after noon, on a bright October day. I was com- ing down Third street. The only objects in motion anywhere in sight in that thickly built and populous quarter, were a man in a buggy behind me, and a street car wending slowly up the cross street. Otherwise, all was solitude and a Sabbath stillness. As I turned the corner, around a frame house, there was a great rattle and jar, and it occurred to me that here was an item ! — no doubt a fight in that house. Before I could turn and seek the door, there came a really terrific shock ; the ground seemed to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and down, and DREAMS DISSIPATED. 422 EFFECTS OF THE SHOCK. there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing together. I fell up against the frame house and hurt my elbow. I knew what it was, now, and from mere reportorial instinct, nothing else, took out my watch and noted the time of day ; at that moment a third and still severer shock came, and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing, I saw a sight ! The entire front of a tall four-story brick building in Third street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the street, raising a dust like a great volume of smoke ! And here came the buggy — overboard went the man, and in THE "ONE-HORSE SHAY " OUT-DONb. less time than I can tell it the vehicle was distributed in small fragments along three hundred yards of street. One could have fancied that somebody had fired a charge of chair-rounds and rags down the thoroughfare. The street car had stopped, the horses were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring out at both ends, and one fat man had crashed half way through a glass window on one side of the car, got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like an impaled madman. INCIDENTS AND CURIOSITIES. 423 Every door, of every house, as far as the eye could reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings ; and almost before one could execute a wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of people stretching in end- less procession down ev- ery street my position commanded. Never was solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker. Of the wonders wrought by " the great earthquake," these were aJl that came under my eye ; but the tricks it did, SBl =i elsewhere, and far and wide over the town, made t(K)thsome gossip for nine HARD ON THE INNOCENTS. days. The destruction of prop- erty was trifling — the injury to it was wide-spread and somewhat serious. The "curiosities" of the earthquake were simply end- less. Gentlemen and ladies who were sick, or were tak ing a siesta, or had dissipa- ted till a late hour and were making up lost sleep, throng- ed into the public streets in all sorts of queer apparel, and some without any at all. One woman who had been wash- ing a naked child, ran down the street holding it by the ankles as if it were a dressed turkey. Prominent citizens who were supposed to keep the Sabbath strictly, rushed out of saloons DRY BONES SHAKEN. 424 GOOD ADVICE BY A CHAMBERMAID. in their shirt-sleeves, with billiard cues in their hands. Doz- ens of men with necks swathed in napkins, rushed from barber-shops, lathered to the eyes or with one cheek clean shaved and the other still bearing a hairy stubble. Horses broke from stables, and a frightened dog rushed up a short attic ladder and out on to a roof, and when his scare was over had not the nerve to go down again the same way he had gone up. A "OH, WHAT SHALL I DO*" prominent editor flew down stairs, in the principal hote), with nothing on but one brief undergarment — met a chambermaid, and exclaimed : " Oh, what shall I do ! Where shall I go !" She responded with naive serenity : " If you have no choice, you might try a clothing-store !" A certain foreign consul's lady was the acknowledged leader of fashion, and every time she appeared in anything new or extraordinary, the ladies in the vicinity made a raid on their husbands' purses and arrayed themselves similarly. One map A SENSIBLE FASHION. 42; who had suffered considerably and growled accordingly, was standing at the window when the shocks came, and the next instant the consul's wife, just out of the bath, fled by with no o* 1 .er apology for clothing than — a bath-towel ! The sufferer rose superior to the terrors of the earthquake, and said to his wife: "JSTow that is something likel Get out your towel my dear !" The plastering that fell from ceilings in San Francisco that day, would have covered several acres of ground. For some days afterward, groups of eyeing and pointing men stood about many a building, looking at long zig-zag cracks that extended from the eaves to the ground. Four feet of the tops of three chimneys on one house were broken square off and turned around in such a way as to completely stop the draft. A crack a hundred feet long gaped open six inches wide in the middle of one street „ GET 0UT Y0DB TOWEI and then shut together again with such force, as to ridge up the meeting earth like a slender grave. A lady sitting in her rocking and quaking parlor, saw the wall part at the ceiling, open and shut twice, like a mouth, and then-drop the end of a brick on the floor like a tooth. She was a woman easily disgusted with foolishness, and she arose and went out of there. One lady who was coming down stairs was astonished to see a bronze Hercules lean forward on its pedestal as if to strike her with its club. They both reached jhe bottom of the flight at the same time, — the woman insen- sible from the fright. Her child, born some little time after- ward, was club-footed . However — on second thought, — if the 426 EFFECT ON THE MINISTERS. reader sees any coincidence in this, lie must do it at his own risk. The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of the churches. The minister, with uplifted han^s, was just closing the services. He glanced up, hesitated, and said: " However, we will omit the benediction !" — and the next instant there was a vacancy in the atmosphere where he had stood. After the first shock, an Oakland minister said : "Keep your seats! There is no better place to die than this " — And added, after the third : " But outside is good enough !" He then skip- ped out at the back door. Such another destruc- tion of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the earthquake created, San Francisco never saw be- fore. There was hardly a girl or a matron in the "we will, omit the benediction. city but suffered losses of this kind. Suspended pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the earthquake's humor, they were whirled completely around with their faces to the wall ! There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to the course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed out of various tanks and buckets settled that. Thousands of people were made so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that they were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days afterward. — Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely. The queer earthquake — episodes that formed the staple of ANOTHER MILLION LOST. 427 San Francisco gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and so I will diverge from the subject. By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow : Nevada Mines in New York. — G. M. Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H. flose, who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores from mines in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese River range, have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet and called the Pine Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of $3,000,000. The stamps on the deed, which is now on its way to Humboldt County, from New York, for record, amounted to $3,000, which is said to be the largest amount of stamps ever placed on one document. A working capital of $1,000,000 has been paid into the treasury, and machinery has already been purchased for a large quartz mill, which will be put up as soon as possible. The stock in this company is all full paid and entirely unassessable. The ores of the mines in this district somewhat resemble those of the Sheba mine in Humboldt. Sheba Hurst, the discoverer of the mines, with his friends cor- ralled all the best leads and all the land and timber they desired before making public their whereabouts. Ores from there, assayed in this city, showi d them to be exceedingly rich in silver and gold — silver predominating. There is an abund- ance of wood and water in the District. We are glad to know that New York capital has been enlisted in the development of the mines of this region. Having seen the ores and assays, we are satisfied that the mines of the District are very valuable — anything but wild-cat. Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a million ! It was the " blind lead " over again. Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I were invent- ing these things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them ; but they are too true to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day.* Suffice it that I so lost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sigbings and foolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless, as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the propri- etors took me aside, with a charity I still remember with con- siderable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal. *True, and yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly. 1 saw Mar- shall, months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim to have captured an entire million. In fact I gathered that he had not then re- ceived $50,000. Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist of uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties. However, when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, and incontinently wilted and went to seed under it. CHAPTER LIX. FOB. a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had established a very excellent literary weekly called the Calif omian, but high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive luxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired of the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a peaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stum- ble into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country. Por two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaint- ances ; for during that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay my board. I became a very adept at " slinking." I slunk from back street to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked familiar, I shmk to my meals, ate them humbly and with a mute apology for every mouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, after wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerful- ness and light, I slunk to my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than the worms. During all this time I A HEALTHY OCCUPATION. 429 had but one piece of money — a silver ten cent piece — and I held to it and would not spend it on any account, lest the conscious- ness coming strong upon me that I was entirely penniless, might suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but the Clothes I had on ; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was smooth with handling. However, I am forgetting. I did have one other occupation beside that of " slinking." It was the entertaining of a col- lector (and being entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia banker's bill for the forty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the " Prodigal." This man used to call regularly once a week and dun me, ard sometimes oftener. He did it from sheer force of habit, for he knew he could get nothing. He would get out his bill, calculate the interest for me, at five per cent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud in it and no mistakes ; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his might for any sum — any little trifle — even a dollar — even half a dollar, on account. Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience free. He immediately dropped the subject there always ; got out a couple of cigars and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we would have a long, luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he would furnish me a world of curious dunning adventures out of the ample store in his memory. By and by he would clap his hat on his head, shake hands and say briskly : " Well, business is business — can't stay with you always !" — and was oft in a second. The idea of pining for a dun ! And yet I used to long for 430 A FRIEND IN MISERY. him to come, and would get as uneasy as any mother if the day went by without his visit, when I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill, at last nor any part of it. I lived to pay it to the banker myself. Misery loves company. Now and then at night, in out-of-the way, dimly lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune. He looked so seedy and forlorn, so home- less and friendless and forsaken, that I yearned toward him as a brother. I wanted to claim kinship with him and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward each other must have been mutual ; at any rate we got to fall- ing together oftener, though still seemingly by accident ; and although we did not speak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out of both of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we would idle along content- edly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at home lights and fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very much enjoying our dumb companionship. Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our woes were identical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, and this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it. After losing his berth, he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt : from a boarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street ; from thence to Dupont ; from thence to a low sailor den ; and from thence to lodg- ings in goods boxes and empty hogsheads near the wharves. Then, for a while, he had gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of grain on the piers ; when that failed he had found food here and there as chance threw it in his way. He had ceased to show his face in daylight, now, for a reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low, and cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day. This mendicant Blucher — I call him that for convenience — was a splendid creature. He was full of hope, pluck and phi- losophy ; he was well read and a man of cultivated taste ; he had a bright wit and was a master of satire ; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyes and changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a crown. A STREAK OF LUCK. 431 He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the most pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympa- thies. He had been without a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets, among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to him. But at last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause was sufficient ; he had not tasted food for forty-eight hours, and he could not endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a back street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that he could trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the bread doubled his hunger ; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imagine what one might do if one only had it. Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot — looked again — did not, and could not, believe his eyes — turned away, to try them, then looked again. It was a verity — no vain, hun- ger-inspired delusion — it was a silver dime ! He snatched it — gloated over it ; doubted it — bit it — found it genuine — choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah. Then he looked around — saw that nobody was looking at him — threw the dime down where it was before — walked away a few steps, and approached again, pretending he did not know it was there, so that A prize. he could re-enjoy the luxury of finding it. He walked around it, viewing it from different points ; then sauntered about with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the signs and now and then glancing at it and feeling the old thrill again. Finally he took it up, and went away, fondling it in his pocket. He idled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and corners to take it out and look at it. By and by he went home to his 432 AN IMAGINARY FEAST. lodgings — an empty qneensware hogshead,— and employed him- self till night trying to make up his mind what to buy with it. But it was hard to do. To get the most for it was the idea. He knew that at the Miner's Restaurant he could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents ; or a fish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave "no bread with one fish-ball" there. At French Pete's he could get a veal cutlet, plain, and some radishes and bread, for ten cents ; or a cup of coffee — a pint at least — and a slice of bread ; but the slice was not thick enough by the eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that in the cutting of it. At seven o'clock his hunger was wolfish ; and still his mind was not made up. He turned out and went up Merchant street, still ciphering ; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving men. He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristo- cratic in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had of- ten dined, in better days, and Martin knew him well. Stand- ing aside, just out of the range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and some prince in disguise would come along pres- ently and tell him to go in there and take whatever he wanted. He chewed his stick with a hun- gry interest as he warmed to his subject. Just at this junc- ture he was conscious of some one at his side, sure enough ; and then a finger touched his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition — a very allegory of Hunger ! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung with rags ; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded piteously. This phantom said : A LOOK IN AT THE WINDOW. WEALTHY BY COMPARISON, 433 " Come with me — please." He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to where the passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put out his hands in a beseeching way, and said: " Friend — stranger — look at me ! Life is easy to you — you go about, placid and content, as I did once, in my day — you have been in there, and eaten your sumptuous supper, aud picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and thought your pleasant DO IT STRANGER. thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world— but you've never suffered ! You don't know what trouble is — you don't know what misery is — nor hunger ! Look at me ! Stranger have pity on a poor friendless, homeless dog ! As God is my judge, 28f 434 TWO SUMPTUOUS DINNERS. I have not tasted food for eight and forty hours ! — look in my eyes and see if I lie ! Give me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving — anything — twenty-five cents ! Do it, stranger — do it, please. It will be nothing to you, but life to me. Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick the dust before you ! I will kiss your footprints — I will worship the very ground you walk on ! Only twenty-five cents ! I am famishing — perishing — starving by inches ! For God's sake don't desert me ! " Blucher was bewildered — and touched, too — stirred to the depths. He reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said : " Come with me." He took the outcast's arm, walked him down to Martin's restaurant, seated him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before him, and said : " Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr. Mar- tin." " All right, Mr. Blucher," said Martin. Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and watched the man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five cents a plate ; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth two dollars apiece ; and when six dollars and a half s worth of destruction had been accomplished, and the stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher went down to French Pete's, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and three radishes, with his dime, and set to and feasted like a king! Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be culled from the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps. CHAPTER LX. BY and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, Califor- nia, and I went back with him. We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there were not five other cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest. Yet a flourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied this grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeming hive, the centre of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell into decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared — streets, dwellings, shops, everything — and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green and smooth and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed. The mere handful of miners still remaining, had seen the town spring up, spread, grow and flourish in its pride ; and they had seen it sicken and die, and pass away like a dream. With it their hopes had died, and their zest of life. They had long ago resigned themselves to their exile, and ceased to correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes toward their early homes. They had accepted banishment, forgotten the world and been forgotten of the world. They were far from telegraphs and railroads, and they stood, as it were, in a living grave, dead to the events that stirred the globe's great popula- tions, dead to the common interests of men, isolated and out- cast from brotherhood with their kind. It was the most singu- lar, and almost the most touching and melancholy exile that fancy can imagine. — One of my associates in this locality, for 436 AN EDUCATED MINER. two or three months, was a man who had had a university edu- cation ; but now for eighteen years he had decayed there by inches, a bearded, rough-clad, clay-stained miner, and at times, among his sighings and solilo- quizings, he unconsciously in- terjected vaguely remembered Latin and Greek sentences — dead and musty tongues, meet vehicles for the thoughts of one whose dreams were all of the past, whose life was a failure ; a tired man, burdened with the present, and indifferent to the future; a man without ties, hopes, interests, waiting for rest and the end. In that one little corner of California is found a species of mining which is seldom or nev- er mentioned in print. It is the old collegiate. called " pocket mining" and I am not aware that any of it is done outside of that little corner. The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as in ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are very wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find one you reap a rich and sudden harvest. There are not now more than twenty pocket miners in that entire lit- tle region. I think I know every one of them personally. I have known one of them to hunt patiently about the hill-sides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to make a snuff-box — his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time — and then find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips of his shovel. I have known him to take out three thousand dollars in two hours, and go and pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on a dazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the night was gone. And the next day he bought his groceries on credit as usual, and shouldered his pan and shovel and went off to tho POCKET MINING. 437 hills hunting pockets again happy and content. This is the most fascinating of all the different kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage of victims to the lunatic asylum. Pocket hunting is an ingenious process. You take a spade- ful of earth from the hill-side and pat it in a large tin pan and dissolve and wash it gradually away till nothing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sediment. Whatever gold was in that earth has remained, because, being the heaviest, it has sought the bottom. Among the sediment you will find half a dozen yellow particles no larger than pin-heads. You are delighted. You move oft' to one side and wash another pan. If you find gold again, you move to one side further, and wash a third pan. If you find no gold this time, you are delighted again, because you know you are on the right scent. You lay an imaginary plan, shaped like a fan, with its han- dle up the hill — for just where the end of the handle is, you argue that the rich deposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains of gold have escaped and been washed down the hill, spread- ing farther and farther apart as they wandered. And so you proceed up the hill, washing the earth and narrowing your lines every time the absence of gold in the pan shows that you are outside the spread of the fan ; striking a pocket. and at last, twenty yards up the hill your lines ha^e converged to a point — a single foot from that point you cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement ; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention ; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you ; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest — and all at once you strike it ! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with 438 FREAKS OF FORTUNE. soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold. Sometimes that one spadefui 13 all — $500. Sometimes the nest contains $10,000, and it takes you three or four days to get it all out. The pock- et-miners tell of one nest that yielded $60,000 and two men exhausted it in two weeks, and then sold the ground for $10,- 000 to a party who never got $300 out of it afterward. The hogs are good pocket hunters. All the summer they root around the bushes, and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt, and then the miners long for the rains ; for the rains beat upon these little piles and wash them down and expose the gold, possibly right over a pocket. Two pockets were found in this way by the same man in one day. One had $5,000 in it and the other $8,000. That man could appreciate it, for he hadn't had a cent for about a year. In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the neighboring village in the afternoon and return every night with household supplies. Part of the distance they traversed a trail, and nearly always sat down to rest on a great boulder that lay beside the path. In the course of thirteen years they had worn that boulder tolerably smooth, sitting on it. By and by two vagrant Mexicans came along and occupied the seat. They began to amuse themselves by chipping off flakes from the boulder with a sledge-hammer. They examined one of these flakes and found it rich with gold. That boulder paid them $800 afterward. But the aggravating circumstance was that these " Greasers " knew that there must be more gold where that boulder came from, and so they went panning up the hill and found what was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced. It took three months to exhaust it, and it yielded $120,000. The two American miners who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and they take turn about in getting up early in the morning to curse those Mexicans — and when it comes down to pure ornamental cursing, the native American is gifted above the sons of men. I have dwelt at some length upon this matter of pocket min- ing because it is a subject that is seldom referred to in print, and therefore I judged that it would have for the reader that interest which naturally attaches to novelty. CHAPTER LXL ONE of my comrades there — another of those victims of eighteen years of unrequited toil and blighted hopes — was one of the gentlest spirits that ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile : grave and simple Dick Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-House Gulch. — He was forty-six, gray as a rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated, slouchily dressed and clay-soiled, but his heart was finer metal than any gold his shovel ever brought to light — than any, indeed, that ever was mined or minted. Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they must love something). And he always spoke of the strange sagacity of that cat with the air of a man who believed in his secret heart that there was something human about it — may be even supernatural. I heard him talking about this animal once. He said : " Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz, which you'd a took an interest in I reckon — most any body would. I had him here eight year — and he was the re- markablest cat I ever see. He was a large gray one of the Tom specie, an' he had more hard, natchral sense than any man in this camp — 'n' a, power of dignity — he wouldn't let the Gov'ner of Californy be familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his life — 'peared to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining. He knowed more about mining, that 440 THE MINER'S PET. TOM QUARTZ. cat did, than any man /ever, ever see. Yon couldn't tell him noth'n' 'bout placer diggin's — 'n' as for pocket mining, why he was just born for it. He would dig out after me an' Jim when we went over the hills pros- pect' n', and he would trot along behind us for as much as live mile, if we went so fur. An' he had the best judgment about mining ground — why you never see any- thing like it. When we went to work, he'd scatter a glance around, 'n' if he didn't think much of the indications, he would give a look as much as to say, ' Well, I'll have to get you to excuse me] 'n' with- out another word he'd hyste his nose into the air 'n' shove for home. But if the ground suited him, he would lay low 'n' keep dark till the first pan was washed, 'n' then he would sidle up 'n' take a look, an' if there was about six or seven grains of gold he was satisfied — he didn't want no better prospect 'n' that — 'n' then he would lay down on our coats and snore like a steamboat till we'd struck the pocket, an' then get up 'n' superintend. He was nearly lightnin' on superintending. " Well, bye an' bye, up comes this yer quartz excitement. Every body was into it — every body was pick'n' 'n' blast'n' instead of shovelin' dirt on the hill side — every body was put'n' down a shaft instead of scrapin' the surface. Noth'n' would do Jim, but we must tackle the ledges, too, 'n' so we did. We commenced put'n' down a shaft, 'n' Tom Quartz he begin to wonder what in the Dickens it was all about. He hadn't ever seen any mining like that before, 'n' he was all upset, as you may say — he couldn't come to a right understanding of it no way — it was too many for him. He was down on it, too, you bet you — he was down on it powerful — 'n' always appeared to consider it the cussedest foolishness out. But that cat, you know, was always agin new fangled arrangements — somehow he never could abide 'em. You know how it is with old habits. TOM QUARTZ ON AN EXCURSION. 441 Bat by an' by Tom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little, though he never could altogether understand that eternal sinkin' of a shaft an' never pannin' out any thing. At last he got to comin' down in the shaft, hisself, to try to cipher it out. An' when he'd git the blues, 'n' feel kind o< scruffy, 'n' aggra- vated 'n' disgusted — knowin' as he did, that the bills was run- nin' up all the time an' we warn't makin' a cent— he would curl up on a gunny sack in the corner an' go to sleep. Well, one day when the shaft was down about eight foot, the rock got so hard that we had to put in a blast — the first blast'n' we'd ever done since Tom Quartz was born. An' then we lit the fuse 'n' dumb out 'n' got off 'bout fifty yards — 'n' forgot 'n' left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunny sack. In 'bout a minute we seen a puff of smoke bust up out of the hole, 'n' then everything let go with an awful crash, 'n' about four million ton of rocks 'n' dirt 'n' smoke 'n' splinters shot up 'bout a mile an' a half into the air, an' by George, right in the dead centre of it was old Tom Quartz a goin' end over end, an' a snortin' an' a sneez'n', an' a clawin' an' a reachin' for things like all possessed. But it warn't no use, you know, it warn't no use. An' that was the 442 A PREJUDICED CAT. AFTER AN EXCURSION. last we see of him for about two minutes V a half, an' then all of a sudden it begin to rain rocks and rubbage, an' directly he come down ker-whop about ten foot off f m where we stood Well, I reckon he was p'raps the orneriest lookin' beast you ever see. One ear was sot back on his neck, 'n' his tail was stove up, 'n' his eye-winkers was swinged off, 'n' he was all blacked up with powder an' smoke, an' all sloppy with mud 'n' slush fm one end to the other. Well sir, it warn't no use to try to apologize — we couldn't say a word. He took a sort of a disgusted look at his- self, 'n' then he looked at us — an' it was just exactly the same as if he had said — ' Gents, may be you think it's smart to take advantage of a cat that 'ain't had no experience of quartz minin', but /think different ' — an' then he turned on his heel 'n' marched off home without ever saying another word. " Tkat was jest his style. An' may be you won't believe it, but after that you never see a cat so prejudiced agin quartz mining as what he was. An' by an' bye when he did get to goin' down in the shaft agin, you'd 'a been astonished at his sagacity. The minute we'd tetch off a blast 'n' the fuse'd begin to sizzle, he'd give a look as much as to say : i Well, I'll have to git you to excuse me,' an' it was surpris'n' the way he'd shin out of that hole 'n' go f r a tree. Sagacity ? It ain't no name for it. 'Twas inspiration !" I said, " Well, Mr. Baker, his prejudice against quartz-min- ing was remarkable, considering how he came by it. Couldn't you ever cure him of it ?" " Cure him ! No ! When Tom Quartz was sot once, he was always sot — and you might a blowed him up as much as three million times 'n' you'd never a broken him of his cussed prej- udice agin quartz mining." The affection and the pride that lit up Baker's face when he delivered this tribute to the firmness of his humble friend of other days, will always be a vivid memory with me. EMPTY POCKETS AND A ROVING LIFE. 443 At the end of two months we had never " struck " a pocket. We had panned up and down the hillsides till they looked plowed like a field ; we could have put in a crop of grain, then, but there would have been no way to get it to market. We got many good " prospects," but when the gold gave out in the pan and we dug down, hoping and longing, we found only emptiness — the pocket that should have been there was as bar- ren as our own. — At last we shouldered our pans and shovels and struck out over the hills to try new localities. We pros- pected around Angel's Camp, in Calaveras county, during three weeks, but had no success. Then we wandered on foot amoiig the mountains, sleeping under the trees at night, for the weather was mild, but still we remained as centless as the last rose of summer. That is a poor joke, but it is in pathetic harmony with the circumstances, since we were so poor ourselves. In accordance with the custom of the country, our door had always stood open and ovr board welcome to tramping miners — they drifted along nearly every day, dumped their paust shovels by the threshold and took " pot luck " with us — and now on our own tramp we never found cold hospitality. Our wanderings were wide and in many directions ; and now I could give the reader a vivid description of the Big Trees and the marvels of the Yo Semite — but what has this reader done to me that I should persecute him ? I will deliver him into the hands of less conscientious tourists and take his bless- ing. Let me be charitable, though I fail in all virtues else. Some of the phrases in the above are mining technicalities, purely, and may be a little obscure to the general reader. In "placer diggings " the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt; in "pocket" diggings it is concentrated in one little spot ; in " quartz " the gold is in a solid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed between distinct walls of some other kind of stone — and this is the most laborious and expensive of all the different kinds of mining. " Prospecting " is hunting for a "placer; " indications' 1 are signs of its presence; "panning out" refers to the washing process by which the grains of gold are separated from the dirt ; a "pros- pect" is what one finds in the first panful of dirt — and its value determines whether it is a good or a bad prospect, and whether it is worth while to tarry there or seek further. . CHAPTER LXIL AFTER a three months' absence, I found myself in San Francisco again, without a cent. When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had become too mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and there were no vacancies on the evening journals,) I was created San Francisco correspond- ent of the Enterprise, and at the end of five months I was out of debt, but my interest in my work was gone ; for my corres- pondence being a daily one, without rest or respite, I got unspeakably tired of it. I wanted another change. The vag- abond instinct was strong upon me. Fortune favored and I got a new berth and a delightful one. It was to go down to the Sandwich Islands and write some letters for the Sacramento Union, an excellent journal and liberal with employes. We sailed in the propeller Ajax, in the middle of winter. The almanac called it winter, distinctly enough, but the weather was a compromise between spring and summer. Six days out of port, it became summer altogether. We had some thirty passengers ; among them a cheerful soul by the name of Wil- liams, and three sea-worn old whaleship captains going down to join their vessels. These latter played euchre in the smok- ing room day and night, drank astonishing quantities of raw whisky without being in the least affected by it, and were the happiest people I think I ever saw. And then there was" the old Admiral — " a retired whaleman. He was a roaring, ter- rific combination of wind and lightning and thunder, and earn- est, whole-souled profanity. But nevertheless he was tender- THE OLD ADMIRAL. 445 hearted as a girl. He was a raving, deafening, devastating typhoon, laying waste the cowering seas but with an nnvexed refuge in the centre where all comers were safe and at rest. Nobody could know the " Admiral " without liking him ; and in a sudden and dire emergency I think no friend of his would know which to c h o o s e — t o be cursed by him or prayed for by a less efficient person. His title of "Ad- miral" was more strictly " official " than any ever worn by a naval officer before or since, per- haps — for it was the voluntary offering of a whole nation, and came direct from the people themselves with- out any intermedi- ate red tape — the people of the Sand- wich Islands. It was a title that the three captains. came to him freighted with affection, and honor, and apprecia- tion of his unpretending merit. And in testimony of the gen- uineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flag should be devised for him and used solely to welome his coming and wave him God-speed in his going. From that time forth, whenever his ship was signaled in the offing, or he catted his anchor and stood out to sea, that ensign streamed from the royal halliards on the parliament house and the nation lifted their hats to it with spontaneous accord. Yet he had never fired a gun or fought a battle in his life. 44ft HOW HE BECAME A SECESSIONIST. When I knew him on board the Ajax, he was seventy-two years old and had plowed the salt water sixty-one of them. For sixteen years he had gone in and out of the harbor of Honolulu in command of a whaleship, and for sixteen more had been captain of a San Francisco and Sandwich Island pas- senger packet and had never had an accident or lost a vessel. The simple natives knew him for a friend who never failed them, and regarded him as children regard a father. It was a dangerous thing to oppress them when the roaring Admiral was around. Two years before I knew the Admiral, he had retired from the sea on a competence, and had sworn a colossal nine-jointed oath that he would " never go within smelling distance of the salt water again as long as he lived." And he had conscien- tiously kept it. That is to say, he . considered he had kept it, and it would have been more than dangerous to suggest to him, even in the gentlest way, that making eleven long sea voy- ages, as a passenger, during the two years that had transpired since he " retired," was only keeping the general spirit of it and not the strict letter. The Admiral knew only one narrow line of conduct to pur- sue in any and all cases where there was a fight, and that was to shoulder his way straight in without an inquiry as to the rights or the merits of it, and take the part of the weaker side. — And this was the reason why he was always sure to be present at the trial of any universally execrated criminal to oppress and intimidate the jury with a vindictive pantomime of what he would do to them if he ever caught them out of the box. And this was why harried cats and outlawed dogs that knew him confidently took sanctuary under his chair in time of trouble. In the beginning he was the most frantic and bloodthirsty Union man that drew breath in the shadow of the Flag ; but the instant the Southerners began to go down before the sweep of the Northern armies, he ran up the Con- federate colors and from that time till the end was a rampant and inexorable secessionist. He hated intemperance with a more uncompromising ani- flIS DAILY HABITS. 447 mosity than any individual I have ever met, of either sex ; and he was never tired of storming against it and beseeching friends and strangers alike to be wary and drink with moderation. And yet if any creature had been guileless enough to intimate that his absorbing nine gallons of " straight " whisky during our voyage was any fraction short of rigid or inflexible abste- miousness, in that self-same moment the old man would have spun him to the uttermost parts of the earth in the whirlwind of his wrath. Mind, I am not saying his whisky ever affected his head or his legs, for it did not, in even the slightest degree. He was a capacious container, but he did not hold enough for that. He took a level tumblerful of whisky every morning before he put his clothes on — " to sweeten his bilge water," he said. — He took another after he got the most of his clothes on, " to set- tle his mind and give him his bearings." He then shaved, and put on a clean shirt ; after which he recited the Lord's Prayer in a fervent, thundering bass that shook the ship to her kelson and suspended all conversation in the main cabin. Then, at this stage, being invariably " by the head," or " by the stern," or " listed to port or starboard," he took one more to " put him on an even keel so that he would mind his helium and not miss stays and go about, every time he came up in the wind." — And now, his state-room door swung open and the sun of his benignant face beamed redly out upon men and women and children, and he roared his " Shipmets a'hoy !" in a way that was calculated to wake the dead and precipitate the final resur- ,*ection ; and forth he strode, a picture to look at and a presence to enforce attention. Stalwart and portly ; not a gray hair ; broad- brimmed slouch hat ; semi-sailor toggery of blue navy flannel — roomy and ample ; a stately expanse of shirt-front and a lib eral amount of black silk neck-cloth tied with a sailor knot ; large chain and imposing seals impending from his fob ; awe- inspiring feet, and " a hand like the hand of Providence," as his whaling brethren expressed it ; wrist-bands and sleeves pushed back half way to the elbow, out of respect for the warm weather, and exposing hairy arms, gaudy with red and blue anchors, ships, and goddesses of liberty tattooed in India ink. 4A$ A DANGEROUS ANTAGONIST. But these details were only secondary matters — his face was the lodestone that chained the eye. It was a sultry disk, glow- ing determinedly out through a weather beaten mask of mahog- any, and studded with warts, seamed with scars, " blazed " all over with unfailing fresh slips of the razor ; and with cheery eyes, under shaggy brows, contemplating the world from over the back of a gnarled crag of a nose that loomed vast and lonely out of the undulating immensity that spread away from its foundations. At his heels frisked the darling of his bachelor estate, his terrier " Fan," a creature no larger than a squirrel. The main part of his daily life was occupied in looking after "Fan," in a motherly way, and doctoring her for a hundred ailments which existed on- ly in his imagination. The Admiral seldom read newspapers ; and when he did he never be- lieved anything they said. He read nothing, and be- lieved in nothing,but u The Old Guard,'* a secession periodical published i n Xew York. He carrried a dozen copies of it with him, always, and referred to them for all required information. If it was not there, he supplied it him- self, out of a bountiful fancy, inventing history, names, dates, and every thing else necessary to make his point good in an argument. Consequently he was a formidable antagonist in a dispute. Whenever he swung clear of the record and began to create history, the ene- my was helpless and had to surrender. Indeed, the enemy *fcWi«*,« CHAPTER LXVIII. WHILE I was in Honolulu I witnessed the ceremonious funeral of the King's sister, her Koyal Highness the Princess Yictoria. According to the royal custom, the remains had lain in state at the palace thirty days, watched day and night by a guard of honor. And during all that time a great multitude of natives from the several islands had kept the pal- ace grounds well crowded and had made the place a pandemo- nium every night with their howlings and wailings, beating of tom-toms and dancing of the (at other times) forbidden " hula- hula" by half-clad maidens to the music of songs of question- able decency chanted in honor of the deceased. The printed programme of the funeral procession interested me at the time ; and after what I have just said of Hawaiian grandilo- quence in the matter of "playing empire," I am persuaded that a perusal of it may interest the reader : After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc., and remembering the sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to wonder where the material for that portion of the procession devoted to " Hawaiian Population Generally " is going to be procured : Undertaker. Royal School. Kawaiahao School. Roman Catholic School. Miaemse School. Honolulu Fire Department. Mechanics' Benefit Union. Attending Physicians. Knonohikis (Superintendents) of the Crown Lands, Konohikis of the Private Lands of His Majesty Konohikis of Private Lands of Her late Royal Highness. FUNERAL PROCESSION. 491 Governor of Oaku and Staff. Hulumanu (Military Company). Household Troops. The Prince of Hawaii's Own (Military Company). The King's household servants. Servants of Her late Royal Highness. Protestant Clergy. The Clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. His Lordship Louis Maigret, The Right Rev. Bishop of Arathea, Vicar-Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands. The Clergy of the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church. His Lordship the Right Rev. Bishop of Honolulu. I 3 A 2 * • m GG ST e * I a d | [HE ABSK]i I p p I ,, 3 & *• ■ p .s ? 9 I *£. A 9 Her Majesty Queen Emma's Carriage. His Majesty's Staff. Carriage of Her late Royal Highness. Carriage of Her Majesty the Queen Dowager. The King's Chancellor. Cabinet Ministers. Bis Excellency the Minister Resident of the United States. H. I. M's Commissioner. H. B. M's Acting Commissioner. Judges of Supreme Court. Privy Councillors. Members of Legislative Assembly. Consular Corps. Circuit Judges. Clerks of Government Departments. Members of the Bar. Collector General, Custom-house Officers and Officers of the Customs. Marshal and Sheriffs of the different Islands. King's Yeomanry. Foreign Residents. Ahahui Kaahumanu. Hawaiian Population Generally. Hawaiian Cavalry. Police Force. *Ranks of long-handled mops made of gaudy feathers — sacred to royalty* They are stuck in the ground around the tomb and left there. 402 POMP AT THE TOMB, I resume my journal at the point where the procession arrived at the royal mausoleum : As the procession filed through the gate, the military deployed handsomely to the right and left and formed an avenue through which the long column of mourners passed to the tomb. The coffin was borne through the door of the mau- soleum, followed by the King and his chiefs, the great officers of the kingdom, foreign Consuls, Embassadors and distinguished guests (Burlingame and General Van Valkenburgh). Several of the kahilis were then fastened to a frame-work in front of the tomb, there to remain until they decay and fall to pieces, or, forestall- ing this, until another scion of royalty dies. At this point of the proceedings the multitude set up such a heart-broken wailing as I hope never to hear again. The soldiers fired three volleys of musketry — the wailing being previously silenced to A MODERN FUNERAL permit of the guns being heard. His Highness Prince William, in a showy mili- tary uniform (the " true prince," this — scion of the house over-thrown by the pres- ent dynasty — he was formerly betrothed to the Princess but was not allowed to marry her), stood guard and paced back and forth within the door. The privileged few who followed the coffin into the mausoleum remained sometime, but the King soon came out and stood in the door and near one side of it. A stranger could have guessed his rank (although he was so simply and unpretentiously dressed) by the profound deference paid him by all persons in his vicinity ; by seeing his high officers receive his quiet orders and suggestions with bowed and uncovered heads ; and by observing how careful thoBe persons who came out of the mauso- A STRIKING CONTRAST. 493 leum were to avoid " crowding " him (although there was room enough in the door, way for a wagon to pass, for that matter) ; how respectfully they edged out side- ways, Bcraping their backs against the wall and always presenting a front view of their persons to his Majesty, and never putting their hats on until they were well out of the royal presence. He was dressed entirely in black — dress-coat and silk hat — and looked rather democratic in the midst of the showy uniforms about him. On his breast he wore a large gold star, which was half hidden by the lappel of his coat. He remained at the door a half hour, and occasionally gave an order to the men who were erect- ing the kahilis before the tomb. He had the good taste to make one of them sub- stitute black crape for the ordinary hempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the frame-work with. Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the populace shortly began to drop into his wake. While he was in view there was but one man who attracted more attention than himself, and that was Harris (the Yankee Prime Minister). This feeble personage had crape enough around his hat to express the grief of an entire nation, and as usual he neglected no opportunity of making himself conspicuous and exciting the admiration of the simple Kanakas. Oh ! noble ambition of this modern Richelieu ! It is interesting to contrast the funeral ceremonies of the Princess Victoria with those of her noted ancestor Kameha- meha the Conqueror, who died fifty years ago — in 1819, the year before the first missionaries came. "On the 8th of May, 1819, at the age of sixty-six, he died, as he had lived, in the faith of his country. It was his misfortune not to have come in contact with men who could have rightly influenced his religious aspirations. Judged by his advantages and compared with the most eminent of his countrymen he may be justly styled not only great, but good. To this day his memory warms the heart and elevates the national feelings of Hawaiians. They are proud of their old warrior King ; they love his name ; his deeds form their historical age ; and an enthusiasm everywhere prevails, shared even by foreigners who knew his worth, that consti- tutes the firmest pillar of the throne of his dynasty. " In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of three hundred dogs attended his obsequies — no mean holocaust when their national value and the estimation in which they were held are considered. The bones of Kameha- meha, after being kept for a while, were so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final resting place is now lost. There was a proverb current among the common people that the bones of a cruel King could not be hid ; they made fish- hooks and arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they vented their abhor- rence of his memory in bitter execrations." The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the native historians, is full of minute detail, but there is scarcely a line of it which does not mention or illustrate some 4:94 A SICK MONARCH. by-gone cii6tom of the country. In this respect it is the most comprehensive document I have yet met with. I will quote it entire : " When Kamehameha was dangerously sick, and the priests were unable to cure him, they said : 'Be of good courage and build a house for the god' (his own pri- vate god or idol), that thou mayest recover.' The chiefs corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of worship was prepared for Kukailimoku, and conse- crated in the evening. They proposed also to the King, with a view to prolong his life, that human victims should be sacrificed to his deity ; upon which the greater part of the people absconded through fear of death, and concealed them- selves in hiding places till the tabu* in which destruction impended, was past. It is doubtful whether Kamehameha approved of the plan of the chiefs and priests to sacrifice men, as he was known to say, ' The men are sacred for the King ; ' meaning that they were for the service of his successor. This information was derived from Liholiho, his son. "After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had not strength to turn himself in his bed. When another season, consecrated for worship at the new temple (heiaic) arrived, he said to his son, Liholiho, ' Go thou and make sup- plication to thy god ; I am not able to go, and will offer my prayers at home.' When his devotions to his feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a certain religiously disposed individual, who had a bird god, suggested to the King that through its influence his sickness might be removed. The name of this god was Pua ; its body was made of a bird, now eaten by the Hawaiians, and called in their language alae. Kamehameha was willing that a trial should be made, and two houses were constructed to facilitate the experiment ; but while dwelling in them he became so very weak as not to receive food. After lying there three days, his wives, children and chiefs, perceiving that he was very low, returned him to his own house. In the evening he was carried to the eating house, f where he took a little food in his mouth which he did not swallow ; also a cup of water. The chiefs requested him to give them his counsel ; but he made no reply, and was carried back to the dwelling house ; but when near midnight — ten o'clock, perhaps — he was carried again to the place to eat ; but, as before, he merely tasted of what was presented to him. Then Kaikioewa addressed him thus: 'Here we all are, your younger brethren, your son Liholiho and your foreigner ; impart to us your dying charge, that Liholiho and Kaahumanu may hear.' Then Kamehame- ha inquired, ' What do you say ? ' Kaikioewa repeated, ' Your counsels for us.' *Tabu (pronounced tah-boo,) means prohibition (we have borrowed it,) or sacred. The tabu was sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary ; and the person or thing placed under tabu was for the time being sacred to the purpose for which it was set apart. In the above case the victims selected under the tabu would be sacred to the sacrifice. fit was deemed pollution to eat in the same hut a person dup* in — the fact that the patient was dying could not modify the rigid etiquette. HUMAN SACRIFICES AT HIS DEATH. 495 He then said, ' Move on in my good way and — .' He could proceed no further. The foreigner, Mr. Young, embraced and kissed him. Hoapili also embraced him, whispering something in his ear, after which he was taken back to the house. About twelve he was carried once more to the house for eating, into which his head entered, while his body was in the dwelling house immediately adjoining. It should be remarked that this frequent carrying of a sick chief from one house to another resulted from the tabu system, then in force. There were at that time six houses (huts) connected with an establishment — one was for worship, one for the men to eat in, an eating house for the women, a house to sleep in, a house in which to manufacture kapa (native cloth) and one where, at certain intervals, the women might dwell in seclusion. " The sick was once more taken to his house, when he expired ; this was at two o'clock, a circumstance from which Leleiohoku derived his name. As he breathed his last, Kalaimoku came to the eating house to order those in it to go out. There were two aged persons thus directed to depart; one went, the other remained on account of love to the King, by whom he had formerly been kindly sustained. The children also were sent away. Then Kalaimoku came to the house, and th$ chiefs had a consultation. One of them spoke thus : ' This is my thought — we will eat him raw.'* Kaahumanu (one of the dead King's widows) replied, ' Per- haps his body is not at our disposal ; that is more properly with his successor. Our part in him — his breath — has departed ; his remains will be disposed of by Liholiho.' " After this conversation the body was taken into the consecrated house for the performance of the proper rites by the priest and the new King. The name of this ceremony is uko; and when the sacred hog was baked the priest offered it to, the dead body, and it became a god, the King at the same time repeating the cus. tomary prayers. " Then the priest, addressing himself to the King and chiefs, said : ' I will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting persons to be sacrificed on the burial of this body. If you obtain one man before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient ; but after it leaves this house four will be required. If delayed until we carry the corpse to the grave there must be ten ; but after it is deposited in the grave there must be fifteen. To-morrow morning there will be &tabu y and, if the sacrifice be delayed until that time, forty men must die.' " Then the high priest, Hewahewa, inquired of the chiefs, ' Where shall be the residence of King Liholiho ? ' They replied, ' Where, indeed ? You, of all men, ought to know.' Then the priest observed, ' There are two suitable places; one is Kau, the other is Kohala.' The chiefs preferred the latter, as it was more thickly inhabited. The priest added, ' These are proper places for the King's res- idence; but he must not remain in Kona, for it is polluted.' This was agreed to. It was now break of day. As he was being carried to the place of burial the peo- *This sounds suspicious, in view of the fact that all Sandwich Island historians, white and black, protest that cannibalism never existed in the islands. However, since they only proposed to " eat him raw " we " won't count that". But it would certainly have been cannibalism if they had cooked him. — [M. T.] 496 DISPOSAL OF HIS BODY. pie perceived that their King was dead, and they wailed. When the corpse was removed from the house to the tomb, a distance of one chain, the procession was met by a certain man who was ardently attached to the deceased. He leaped upon the chiefs who were carrying the King's body ; he desired to die with him on ac- count of his love. The chiefs drove him away. He persisted in making nume- rous attempts, which were unavailing. Kalaimoka also had it in his heart to die with him, but was prevented by Hookio. " The morning following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in a bundle, which being done, the season of defile- ment terminated. If the deceased were' not a chief, the house only was defiled which became pure again on the burial of the body. Such were the laws on this subject. " On the morning on which Liholiho sailed in his canoe for Kohala, the chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a chiefs death, conduct- ing themselves like madmen and like beasts. Their conduct was such as to for- bid description; The priests, also, put into action the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had prayed the King to death might die ; for it was not believed that Kamehameha's departure was the effect either of sickness or old age. When the sorcerers set up by their fire-places stick with a strip of kapa flying at the top, the chief Keeaumoku, Kaahumaun's brother, came in a state of intoxication and broke the flag-staff of the sorcerers, from which it was inferred that Kaahumanu and her friends had been instrumental in the King's death. On this account they were subjected to abuse." You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is. This great Queen, Kaahumanu, who was "subjected to abuse" dur- ing the frightful orgies that followed the King's death, in accordance with ancient custom, afterward became a devout Christian and a steadfast and powerful friend of the missionaries. Dogs were, and still are, reared and fattened for food, by the natives — hence the reference to their value in one of the above paragraphs. Forty years ago it was the custom in the Islands to suspend all law for a certain number of days after the death of a royal personage ; and then a saturnalia ensued which one may picture to himself after a fashion, but not in the full horror of the real- ity. The people shaved their heads, knocked out a tooth or two, plucked out an eye sometimes, cut, bruised, mutilated or AFTER BURIAL ORGIES. 497 burned their flesh, got drunk, burned each other's huts, maimed or murdered one another according to the caprice of the mo- ment, and both sexes gave themselves up to brutal and unbri- dled licentiousness. And after it all, came a torpor from which FORMEU FUNEK.AX OliGIES. the nation slowly emerged bewildered and dazed, as if from a hideous half-remembered nightmare. They were not the salt of the earth, those " gentle children of the sun." The natives still keep up an old custom of theirs which can- not be comforting to an invalid. When they think a sick friend is going to die, a couple of dozen neighbors surround his hut and keep up a deafening wailing night and day till he either dies or gets well. No doubt this arrangement has helped many a subject to a shroud before his appointed time. They surround a hut and wail in the same heart-broken way when its occupant returns from a journey. This is their dismal idea of a welcome. A very little of it would go a great way with most of us. 32f CHAPTER LXIX. BOUND for Hawaii (a hundred and fifty miles distant,) to visit the great volcano and behold the other notable things which distinguish that island above the remainder of the group, we sailed from Honolulu on a certain Saturday afternoon, in the good schooner Boomerang. The Boomerang was about as long as two street cars, and about as wide as one. She was so small (though she was larger than the majority of the inter-island coasters) that when I stood on her deck I felt but little smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes must have felt when he had a man-of-war under him. I could reach the water when she lay over under a strong breeze. When the Captain and my comrade (a Mr. Billings), myself and four other persons were all assembled on the little after portion of the deck which is sacred to the cabin passengers, it was full — there was not room for any more quality folks. An- other section of the deck, twice as large as ours, was full of natives of both sexes, with their customary dogs, mats, blankets, pipes, calabashes of poi, fleas, and other luxuries and baggage of minor importance. As soon as we set sail the natives all lay down on the deck as thick as negroes in a slave-pen, and smoked, conversed, and spit on each other, and were truly sociable. The little low-ceiled cabin below was rather larger than a hearse, and as dark as a vault. It had two coffins on each side — I mean two bunks. A small table, capable of accommodating "ONCE MORE UPON THE WATERS. 499 three persons at dinner, stood against the forward bulkhead, and over it hung the dingiest whale oil lantern that ever peo- pled the obscurity of a dungeon with ghostly shapes. The floor room unoccupied was not extensive. One might swing a cat in it, perhaps, but not a long cat. The hold forward of the bulkhead had but little freight in it, and from morning till night a portly old rooster, with a voice like Baalam's ass, and the same disposition to use it, strutted up and down in that part of the vessel and crowed. He usually took dinner at six o'clock, and then, after an hour devoted to medita- tion, he mounted a barrel and crow- ed a good part of the night. He got hoarser and hoarser all the time, but he scorned to allow any per- sonal consideration to interfere with A P * SSENGBR - his duty, and kept up his labors in defiance of threatened diphtheria. Sleeping was out of the question when he was on watch. He was a source of genuine aggravation and annoyance. It was worse than useless to shout at him or apply offensive epi- thets to him — he only took these things for applause, and strained himself to make more noise. Occasionally, during the day, I threw potatoes at him through an aperture in the bulk- head, but he only dodged and went on crowing. The first night, as I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lamp swinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nau- seous odors of bilge water, I felt something gallop over me. I turned out promptly. However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently something galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time, and I thought it might be a centipede, because the Captain had killed one on deck in the afternoon. I f urned out. The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each 500 OUR PASSENGERS. end of it — cockroaches as large as peach leaves — fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crow- ing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they struck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck. The above is not overdrawn ; it is a truthful sketch of inter- island schooner life. There is no such thing as keeping a ves- sel in elegant condition, when she carries molasses and Kanakas. It was compensation for my sufferings to come unexpectedly upon so beautiful a scene as met my eye — to step suddenly out of the sepulchral gloom of the cabin and stand under the strong light of the moon — in the centre, as it were, of a glittering sea of liquid silver — to see the broad sails straining in the gale, the ship keeled over on her side, the angry foam hissing past her lee bulwarks, and sparkling sheets of spray dashing high over her bows and raining upon her decks ; to brace myself and hang fast to the first object that presented itself, with hat jammed down and coat tails whipping in the breeze, and feel that exhilaration that thrills in one's hair and quivers down his back bone when he knows that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel cleaving through the waves at her ut- most speed. There was no darkness, no dimness, no obscurity there. All was brightness, every object was vividly defined. Every prostrate Kanaka ; every coil of rope ; every calabash of poi ; every puppy ; every seam in the flooring ; every bolthead ; every object, however minute, showed sharp and distinct in its every outline ; and the shadow of the broad mainsail lay black IN THE MOONLIGHT. 501 as a pall upon the deck, leaving Billings's white upturned face glorified and his body in a total eclipse. Monday morning we were close to the island of Hawaii. Two of its high mountains were in view — Mauna Loa and Hualaiai. The latter is an imposing peak, but being only ten MOONLIGHT ON THE WATBR. thousand feet high is seldom mentioned or heard of. Mauna Loa is said to be sixteen thousand feet high. The rays of glittering snow and ice, that clasped its summit like a claw, looked refreshing when viewed from the blistering climate we were in. One could stand on that mountain (wrapped up in blankets and furs to keep warm), and while he nibbled a snow- ball or an icicle to quench his thirst he could look down the long sweep of its sides and see spots where plants are growing that grow only where the bitter cold of Winter prevails ; lower down he could see sections devoted to productions that thrive in the temperate zone alone ; and at the bottom of the moun- 502 ORANGES AND PEACHES. tain lie coma see the home of the tufted cocoa-palms and other species of vegetation that grow only in the sultry atmosphere of eternal Summer. He could see all the climes of the world at a single glance of the eye, and that glance would only pass over a distance of four or five miles as the bird flies ! By and by we took boat and went ashore at Kailua, design- ing to ride horseback through the pleasant orange and coffee region of Kona, and rejoin the vessel at a point some leagues distant. This journey is well worth taking. The trail passes along on high ground — say a thousand feet above sea level — and usually about a mile distant from the ocean, which is always in sight, save that occasionally you find yourself buried in the forest in the midst of a rank tropical vegetation and a dense growth of trees, whose great bows overarch the road and shut out sun and sea and everything, and leave you in a dim, shady tunnel, haunted with invisible singing birds and fragrant with the odor of flowers. It was pleasant to ride occasionally in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon the ever-changing pano- rama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its many tints, its softened lights and shadows, its billowy undulations sweep- ing gently down from the mountain to the sea. It was pleasant also, at intervals, to leave the sultry sun and pass into the cool, green depths of this forest and indulge in sentimental reflections under the inspiration of its brooding twilight and its whispering foliage. We rode through one orange grove that had ten thousand trees in it ! They were all laden with fruit. At one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavor. This fruit, as a general thing, does not do well in the Sandwich Islands. It takes a sort of ahnond shape, and is small and bitter. It needs frost, they say, and perhaps it does ; if this be so, it will have a good opportunity to go on needing it, as it will not be likely to get it. The trees from which the fine fruit I have spoken of, came, had been planted and replanted sixteen times, and to this treatment the proprietor of the orchard attributed his success. SUGAR PLANTATIONS. 503 We passed several sugar plantations — new ones and not very extensive. The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons. [Note. — The first crop is called " plant cane ;" subsequent crops which spring from the original roots, without replanting, are called " rattoons."] Almost everywhere on the island of Hawaii sugar-cane matures in twelve months, both rattoons and plant, and although it ought to be taken off as soon as it tassels, no doubt, it is not absolutely necessary to do it until about four months afterward. In Kona, the average yield of an acre of ground is two tons of sugar, they say. This is only a moderate yield for these islands, but would be astounding for Louisiana and most other sugar growing countries. The plantations in Kona being on pretty high ground — up among the light and frequent rains — no irrigation whatever is required. CHAPTER LXX. WE stopped some time at one of the plantations, to rest ourselves and refresh the horses. We had a chatty conversation with several gentlemen present ; but there was one person, a middle aged man, with an absent look in his face, who simply glanced up, gave us good-day and lapsed again into the meditations which our coming had interrupted. The planters whispered us not to mind him — crazy. They said he was in the Islands for his health ; was a preacher ; his home, Michigan. They said that if he woke up presently and fell to talking about a correspondence which he had some time held with Mr. Greeley about a trine of some kind, we must humor him and listen with interest ; and we must humor his fancy that this correspondence was the talk of the world. It was easy to see that he was a gentle creature and that his madness had nothing vicious in it. He looked pale, and a little worn, as if with perplexing thought and anxiety of mind. He sat a long time, looking at the floor, and at intervals muttering to himself and nodding his head acquiescingly or shaking it in mild protest. He was lost in his thought, or in his memo- ries. We continued our talk with the planters, branching from subject to subject. But at last the word " circumstance," casually dropped, in the course of conversation, attracted his attention and brought an eager look into his countenance. He faced about in his chair and said : "Circumstance? What circumstance? Ah, I know — I ANOTER DROLL CHARACTER. 505 know too well. So you have heard of it too." [With a sigh.] "Well, no matter — all the world has heard of it. All the world. The whole world. It is a large world, too, for a thing to travel so far in — now isn't it ? Yes, yes — the Greeley cor- respondence with Erickson has created the saddest and bitterest controversy on both sides of the ocean — and still they keep it up ! It makes us famous, but at what a sorrowful sacrifice ! I was so sorry when I heard that it had caused that bloody and distressful war over there in Italy. It was little comfort to me, after so much bloodshed, to know that the victors sided with me, and the vanquished with Greeley. — It is little comfort to know that Horace Greeley is responsible for the battle of Sadowa, and not me. Queen Victoria wrote me that she felt just as I did about it — she said that as much as she was op- THE DEMENTED. posed to Greeley and the spirit he showed in the correspondence with me, she would not have had Sadowa happen for hundreds of dollars. I can show you her letter, if you would like to see it. But gentlemen, much as you may think you know about that unhappy correspondence, you cannot know the straight of it till you hear it from my lips. It has always been garbled in 506 MRS. BEAZELEY AND HER SON. the journals, and even in history. Yes, even in history — think of it ! Let me — -please let me, give you the matter, exactly as it occurred. I truly will not abuse your confidence." Then he leaned forward, all interest, all earnestness, and told his story — and told it appealingly, too, and yet in the simplest and most unpretentious way ; indeed, in such a way as to sug- gest to one, all the time, that this was a faithful, honorable witness, giving evidence in the sacred interest of justice, and under oath. He said : " Mrs. Beazeley— Mrs. Jackson Beazeley, widow, of the village of Campbellton, Kansas, — wrote me about a matter which was near her heart — a matter which many might think trivial, but to her it was a thing of deep concern. I was living in Michi- gan, then — serving in the ministry. She was, and is, an esti- mable woman — a woman to whom poverty and hardship have proven incentives to industry, in place of discouragements. Her only treasure was her son William, a youth just verging upon manhood ; religious, amiable, and sincerely attached to agriculture. He was the widow's comfort and her pride. And so, moved by her love for him, she wrote me about a matter, as I have said before, which lay near her heart — because it lay near her boy's. She desired me to confer with Mr. Greeley about turnips. Turnips were the dream of her child's young ambition. While other youths were frittering away in frivo- lous amusements the precious years of budding vigor which God had given them for useful preparation, this boy was pa- tiently enriching his mind with information concerning turnips. The sentiment which he felt toward the turnip was akin to adoration. He could not think of the turnip without emotion; he could not speak of it calmly ; he could not contemplate it without exaltation. He could not eat it without shedding tears. All the poetry in his sensitive nature was in sympathy with the gracious vegetable. With the earliest pipe of dawn he sought his patch, and when the curtaining night drove him from it he shut himself up with his books and garnered statis- tics till sleep overcame him. On rainy days he sat and talked MEDITATIONS ON TURNIPS. 507 hours together with his mother about turnips. When company came, he made it his loving duty to put aside everything else and converse with them all the day long of his great joy in DISCUSSING TURNIPS. the turnip. And yet, was this joy rounded and complete ? Was there no secret alloy of unhappiness in it ? Alas, there was. There was a canker gnawing at his heart ; the noblest inspiration of his soul eluded his endeavor — viz : he could not make of the turnip a climbing vine. Months went by ; the bloom forsook his cheek, the fire faded out of his eye ; sighings and abstraction usurped the place of smiles and cheerful con- verse. But a watchful eye noted these things and in time a motherly sympathy unsealed the secret. Hence the letter to me. She pleaded for attention — she said her boy was dying by inches. " I was a stranger to Mr. Greeley, but what of that ? The matter was urgent. I wrote and begged him to solve the dif- ficult problem if possible and save the student's life. My in- terest grew, until it partook of the anxiety of the mother. I waited in much suspense.— At last the answer came. 50S A LETTER FROM A HIGH AUTHORITY. " I found that I could not read it readily, the handwriting being unfamiliar and my emotions somewhat wrought up. It seemed to refer in part to the boy's case, but chiefly to other and irrelevant matters — such as paving-stones, electricity, oys- ters, and something which I took to be ' absolution ' or ' agra- rianism,' I could not be certain which ; still, these appeared to be simply casual mentions, nothing more ; friendly in spirit, without doubt, but lacking the connection or coherence neces- sary to make them useful. — I judged that my understanding was affected by my feelings, and so laid the letter away till morning. " In the morning I read it again, but with difficulty and uncertainty still, for I had lost some little rest and my mental vision seemed clouded. The note was more connected, now, but did not meet the emergency it was expected to meet. It was too discursive. It appeared to read as follows, though I was not certain of some of the words : 1 Polygamy dissembles majesty ; extracts redeem polarity ; causes hitherto exist. Ovations pursue wisdom, or warts inherit and condemn. Boston, botany, cakes, folony undertakes, but who shall allay ? We fear not. Yrxwly, Hbvace Eveeloj.' " But there did not seem to be a word about turnips. There seemed to be no suggestion as to how they might be made to grow like vines. There was not even a reference to the Beaze- leys. I slept upon the matter ; I ate no supper, neither any breakfast next morning. So I resumed my work with a brain refreshed, and was very hopeful. Now the letter took a differ- ent aspect — all save the signature, which latter I judged to be only a harmless affectation of Hebrew. The epistle was neces- sarily from Mr. Greeley, for it bore the printed heading of The Tribune, and I had written to no one else there. The letter, I say, had taken a different aspect, but still its language was eccentric and avoided the issue. It now appeared to say : ' Bolivia extemporizes mackerel ; borax esteems polygamy ; sausages wither in the east. Creation perdu, is done ; for woes inherent one can damn. Buttons, buttons, corks, geology underrates but we shall allay. My beer's out. Yrxwly, Hevace Eveeloj.' HORACE GREELEY— HIS MARK. 509 tsTew 2*"L ^fe^&^S^ " I was evidently overworked. My comprehension was im- paired. Therefore I gave two days to recreation, and then returned to my task greatly refreshed. The letter now took this form : * Poultices do sometimes choke swine ; tulips reduce posterity ; causes leather to resist. Our notions empower wisdom, her let's afford while we can. Butter but any cakes, fill any undertaker, we'll wean him from his filly. We feel hot. Yrxwly, Hbvacb Evebloj.' 510 AN INDIGNANT REJOINER. " I was still not satisfied. These generalities did not meet the question. They were crisp, and vigorous, and delivered with a confidence that almost compelled conviction ; but at such a time as this, with a human life at stake, they seemed inap- propriate, worldly, and in bad taste. At any other time I would have been not only glad, but proud, to receive from a man like Mr. Greeley a letter of this kind, and would have studied it earnestly and tried to improve myself all I could ; but now, with that poor boy in his far home languishing for relief, I had no heart for learning. " Three days passed by, and I read the note again. Again its tenor had changed. It now appeared to say : 1 Potations do sometimes wake wines ; tnrnips restrain passion ; causes necessary to state. Infest the poor widow ; her lord's effects will be void. But dirt, bath- ing, etc., etc., followed unfairly, will worm him from his folly — so swear not. Trxwly, Hevacb Evbeloj.' " This was more like it. But I was unable to proceed. I was too much worn. The word ' turnips ' brought temporary joy and encouragement, but my strength was so much impaired, and the delay might be so perilous for the boy, that I relin- quished the idea of pursuing the translation further, and re- solved to do what I ought to have done at first. I sat down and wrote Mr. Greeley as follows : 'Dear Sir : I fear I do not entirely comprehend your kind note. It cannot be possible, Sir, that ' turnips restrain passion ' — at least the study or contempla- tion of turnips cannot — for it is this very employment that has scorched our poor friend's mind and sapped his bodily strength. — But if they do restrain it, will you bear with us a little further and explain how they should be prepared ? I observe that you say ' causes necessary to state,' but you have omitted to state them. "Under a misapprehension, you seem to attribute to me interested motives in this matter — to call it by no harsher term. But I assure you, dear sir, that if I seem to be ' infesting the widow,' it is all seeming, and void of reality. It is from no seeking of mine that I am in this position. She asked me, herself, to write you. I never have infested her — indeed I scarcely know her. I do not infest anybody. I try to go along, in my humble way, doing as near right as I can, never harming anybody, and never throwing out insinuations. As for ' her lord and his effects,' they are of no interest to me. I trust I have effects enough of my own — shall endeavor to get along with them, at any rate, and not go mousing around to get hold of somebody's that are ' void" But do you not see ?— this woman is & widow — she has no 'lord.' He is dead— or pretended to be, when they buried TRANSLATED AT LAST. 511 him. Therefore, no amount of * dirt, bathing,' etc., etc., howsoever * unfairly fol- lowed' will be likely to ' worm him from his folly ' — if being dead and a ghost i» 'folly.' Tour closing remark is as unkind as it was uncalled for; and if report says true you might have applied it to yourself, sir, with more point and less impro- priety. Very Truly Yours, Simon Ekickson. "In the course of a few days, Mr. Greeley did what would have saved a world of trouble, and much mental and bodily suffering and misunderstanding, if he had done it sooner. To- wit, he sent an intelligible rescript or translation of his original note, made in a plain hand by his clerk. Then the mystery cleared, and I saw that his heart had been right, all the time. I will recite the note in its clarified form : [Translation.] * 1 Potatoes do sometimes make vines ; turnips remain passive : cause unnecessary to state. Inform the poor widow her lad's efforts will be vain. But diet, bath- ing, etc. etc., followed uniformly, wiU wean him from his folly— so fear not. Tours, Hob ace Greeley.' " But alas, it was too late, gentlemen — too late. The crim- inal delay had done its work — young Beazely was no more. His spirit had taken its flight to a land where all anxieties shall be charmed away, all desires gratified, all ambitions real- ized. Poor lad, they laid him to his rest with a turnip in each hand." So ended Erickson, and lapsed again into nodding, mumbling, and abstraction. The company broke up, and left him so. . . . But they did not say what drove him crazy. In the momen- tary confusion, I forgot to ask. CHAPTER LXXI. AT four o'clock in the afternoon we were winding down a mountain of dreary and desolate lava to the sea, and clos- ing our pleasant land journey. This lava is the accumulation of ages ; one torrent of fire after another has rolled down here in old times, and built up the island structure higher and higher. Underneath, it is honey-combed with caves ; it would be of no use to dig wells in such a place ; they would not hold water — you would not find any for them to hold, for that mat- ter. Consequently, the planters depend upon cisterns. The last lava flow occurred here so long ago that there are none now living who witnessed it. In one place it enclosed and burned down a grove of cocoa-nut trees, and the holes in the lava where the trunks stood are still visible ; their sides retain the impression of the bark ; the trees fell upon the burning river, and becoming partly submerged, left in it the perfect counterpart of every knot and branch and leaf, and even nut, for curiosity seekers of a long distant day to gaze upon and wonder at. There were doubtless plenty of Kanaka sentinels on guard hereabouts at that time, but they did not leave casts of their figures in the lava as the Roman sentinels at Herculaneum and Pompeii did. It is a pity it is so, because such things are so interesting ; but so it is. They probably went away. They went away early, perhaps. However, they had their merits ; the Romans exhibited the higher pluck, but the Kanakas showed the sounder judgment. KEALAKEKUA BAY. 513 Shortly we came in sight of that spot whose history is so familiar to every school-boy in the wide world — Kealakekua Bay — the place where Captain Cook, the great circumnaviga- tor, was killed by the natives, nearly a hundred years ago. The setting sun was naming upon it, a Summer shower was falling, and it was spanned by two magnificent rainbows. Two men who were in advance of us rode through one of these and for a moment their garments shone with a more than regal splendor. Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discovery the Rainbow Islands? These charm- ing spectacles are present to you at every turn ; they are com- mon in all the islands ; they are visible every day, and fre- quently at night also — not the silvery bow we see once in an age in the States, by moonlight, but barred with all bright and beautiful colors, like the children of the sun and rain. I saw one of them a few nights ago. What the sailors call " rain, dogs " — little patches of rainbow — are often seen drifting about the heavens in these latitudes, like stained cathedral windows. Kealakekua Bay is a little curve like the last kink of a snail- shell, winding deep into the land, seemingly not more than a mile wide from shore to shore. It is bounded on one side — where the murder was done — by a little flat plain, on which stands a cocoanut grove and some ruined houses; a steep wall of lava, a thousand feet high at the upper end and three or four hundred at the lower, comes down from the mountain and bounds the inner extremity of it. From this Avail the place takes its name, Kealakekua, which in the native tongue signi- fies " The Pathway of the Gods." They say, (and still believe, in spite of their liberal education in Christianity), that the great god Zono, who used to live upon the hillside, always traveled that causeway when urgent business connected with heavenly affairs called him down to the seashore in a hurry. As the red sun looked across the placid ocean thiough the tall, clean stems of the cocoar.ut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through the bars of a city prison, J went and stood. in the edge of the water on the fl&£ rock pressed by Captain 33f 514 CAPT. COOK'S ASSASSINATION. Cook's feet when the blow was dealt which took away his life, and tried to picture in my mind the doomed man struggling in the midst of the multitude of exasperated savages — the men KEALAKEKUA BAT AND COOK'S MONUMENT. in the ship crowding to the vessel's side and gazing in anxious dismay toward the shore — the — but I discovered that I could not do it. It was growing dark, the rain began to fall, we could see that the distant Boomerang was helplessly becalmed at sea, and so I adjourned to the cheerless little box of a warehouse and sat down to smoke and think, and wish the ship would make the land — for we had not eaten much for ten hours and were vic- iously hungry. Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook's assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifi- able homicide. "Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received and welcomed bv the inhabitants, and his COOK'S MONUMENT. 515 ships lavishly supplied with all manner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and ill-treatment. Perceiving that the people took him for the long vanished and lamented god Lono, he encouraged them in the delusion for the sake of the limitless power it gave him ; but during the famous disturbance at this spot, and while he and his comrades were surrounded by fifteen thousand maddened savages, he received a hurt and betrayed his earthly origin with a groan. It was his death- warrant. Instantly a shout went up : " He groans ! — he is not a god !" So they closed in upon him and dispatched him. His flesh was stripped from the bones and burned (except nine pounds of it which were sent on board the ships). The heart was hung up in a native hut, where it was found and eaten by three children, who mistook it for the heart of a dog. One of these children grew to be a very old man, and died in Honolulu a few years ago. Some of Cook's bones were recov- ered and consigned to the deep by the officers of the ships. Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook. They treated him well. In return, he abused them. He and his men inflicted bodily injury upon many of them at different times, and killed at least three of them before they offered any proportionate retaliation. Near the shore we found " Cook's Monument " — only a cocoa- nut stump, four feet high and about a foot in diameter at the butt. It had lava boulders piled around its base to hold it up and keep it in its place, and it was entirely sheathed over, from top to bottom, with rough, discolored sheets of copper, such as ships' bottoms are coppered with. Each sheet had a rude inscription scratched upon it — with a nail, apparently — and in every case the execution was wretched. Most of these merely recorded the visits of British naval commanders to the spot, but one of them bore this legend : " Near this spot fell CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, The Distinguished Circumnavigator, who Discovered these Islands A. D. 1778. 516 THE SLEEP OF THE INNOCENT. After Cook's murder, his second in command, on board the ship, opened lire upon the swarms of natives on the beach, and one of his cannon balls cut this cocoanut tree short off and left this monumental stump standing. It looked sad and lonely enough to us, out there in the rainy twilight. But there is no other monument to Captain Cook. True, up on the mountain side we had passed by a large inclosure like an ample hog-pen, built of lava blocks, which marks the spot where Cook's flesh was stripped from his bones and burned ; but this is not prop- erly a monument, since it was erected by the natives themselves, and less to do honor to the circumnavigator than for the sake of convenience in roasting him. A thing like a guide-board was elevated above this pen on a tall pole, and formerly there was an inscription upon it describing the memorable occurrence that had there taken place ; but the sun and the wind have long ago so defaced it as to render it illegible. Toward midnight a fine breeze sprang up and the schooner soon worked herself into the bay and cast anchor. The boat came ashore for us, and in a little while the clouds and the rain were all gone. The moon was beaming tranquilly down on land and sea, and we two were stretched upon the deck sleeping the refreshing sleep and dreaming the happy dreams that are only vouchsafed to the weary and the innocent. CHAPTER LXXII. IN the breezy morning we went ashore and visited the ruined temple of the last god Lono. The high chief cook of this temple — the priest who presided over it and roasted the human sacrifices — was uncle to Obookia, and at one time that youth was an apprentice-priest under him. Obookia was a young native of fine mind, who, together with three other native boys, was taken to New England by the captain of a whaleship dur- ing the reign of Ivamehameha I, and they were the means of attracting the attention of the religious world to their country. This resulted in the sending of missionaries there. And this Obookia was the very same sensitive savage who sat down on the church steps and wept because his people did not have the Bible. That incident has been very elaborately painted in many a charming Sunday School book — aye, and told so plain- tively and so tenderly that I have cried over it in Sunday School myself, on general principles, although at a time when I did not know much and could not understand why the peo- ple of the Sandwich Islands needed to worry so much about it as long as they did not know there was a Bible at all. Obookia was converted and educated, and was to have re- turned to his native land with the first missionaries, had he lived. The other native youths made the voyage, and two of them did good service, but the third, William Kanui, fell from grace afterward, for a time, and when the gold excitement broke out in California he journeyed thither and went to min- 518 A TEMPLE BUILT BY GHOSTS. ing, although he was fifty years old. He succeeded pretty well, but the failure of Page, Bacon & Co. relieved him of six thousand dollars, and then, to all intents and purposes, he was a bankrupt in his old age and he resumed service in the pulpit again. He died in Honolulu in 1864. Quite a broad tract of land near the temple, extending from the sea to the mountain top, was sacred to the god Lono in olden times — so sacred that if a common native set his sacrile- gious foot upon it it was judicious for him to make his will, because his time had come. He might go around it by water, but he could not cross it. It was well sprinkled with pagan temples and stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out of logs of wood. There was a temple devoted to prayers for rain — and with fine sagacity it was placed at a point so well up on the mountain side that if you prayed there twenty-four times a day for rain you would be likely to get it every time. THE GHOSTLY BUILDERS. You would seldom get to your Amen before you would have to hoist your umbrella. And there was a large temple near at hand which was built in a single night, in the midst of storm and thunder and rain, by the ghastly hands of dead men ! Tradition says that by the A BEVY OF FEMALE BATHERS. 519 wierd glare of the lightning a noiseless multitude of phantoms were seen at their strange labor far up the mountain side at dead of night — flitting hither and thither and bearing great lava-blocks clasped in their nerveless fingers — appearing and disappearing as the pallid lustre fell upon their forms and faded away again. Even to this day, it is said, the natives hold this dread structure in awe and reverence, and will not pass by it in the night. At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bath- ing in the sea, and went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen. I begged them to come out, for the sea was rising and I was satisfied that they were running some risk. But they were not afraid, and presently went on with their sport. They were finished swimmers and divers, and en* ON GUARD. joyed themselves to the last degree. They swam races, splashed and ducked and tumbled each other about, and filled the air with their laughter. It is said that the first thing an Islander learns is how to swim ; learning to walk being a matter of smaller consequence, comes afterward. One hears tales of na- tive men and women swimming ashore from vessels many miles at sea — more miles, indeed, than I dare vouch for or even mention. And they tell of a native diver who went down in thirty or forty-foot waters and brought up an anvil ! I think 520 THE IDOL LONO. lie swallowed the anvil afterward, if my memory serves me. However I will not urge this point. I have spoken, several times, of the god Lono — I may as well furnish two or three sentences concerning him. The idol the natives worshiped for him was a slender, unor- namented staff twelve feet long. Tradition says he was a fa- vorite god on the Island of Hawaii— a great king who had been deified for meritorious services — just our own fashion of rewarding heroes, with the difference that we would have made him a Postmaster instead of a god, no doubt. In an angry moment he slew his wife, a goddess named Kaikilani Aiii. Kemorse of conscience drove him mad, and tradition presents us the singular spectacle of a god traveling " on the shoulder;" for in his gnawing grief he wandered about from place to place boxing and wrestling with all whom he met. Of course this pastime soon lost its novelty, inasmuch as it must necessarily have been the case that when so powerful a deity sent a frail human opponent " to grass " he never came back any more. Therefore, he instituted games called makahiki, and ordered that they should be held in his honor, and then sailed for for- eign lands on a three-cornered raft, stating that he woujd return some day — and that was the last of Lono. He was never seen any more ; his raft got swamped, perhaps. But the people always expected his return, and thus they were easily led to accept Captain Cook as the restored god. Some of the old natives believed Cook was Lono to the day of their death ; but many did not, for they could not under- stand how he could die if he was a god. Only a mile or so from Kealakekua Bay is a spot of historic interest — the place where the last battle was fought for idolatry. Of course we visited it, and came away as wise as most people do who go and gaze upon such mementoes of the past when in an unreflective mood. While the first missionaries were on their way around the Horn, the idolatrous customs which had obtained in the island, as far back as tradition reached were suddenly broken up. Old INFLUENCE OF WOMEN AND WHISKEY 521 Kamehameha L, was dead, and his son, Liholiho, the new King was a free liver, a roystering, dissolute fellow, and hated the restraints of the ancient tabu. His assistant in the Govern- ment, Kaahumanu, the Queen dowager, was proud and high- spirited, and hated the tabu because it restricted the privileges of her sex and degraded all women very nearly to the level of brutes. So the case stood. Liholiho had half a mind to put his foot down, Kaahumahu had a whole mind to badger him into doing it, and whiskey did the rest. It was probably the rest. It was probably the first time whiskey ever prominently figured as an aid to civilization. Liholiho came up to Kailua as drunk as a piper, and attended a great feast ; the determined Queen spurred his drunken courage up to a reckless pitch, and then, while all the multitude stared in blank dismay, he moved deliberately forward and sat down with the women! They THE TABU BROKEN. saw him eat from the same vessel with them, and were appalled ! Terrible moments drifted slowly by, and still the King ate, 522 A FIERCE CONFLICT FOR IDOLATRY. still he lived, still the lightnings of the insulted gods were withheld ! Then conviction came like a revelation — the super- stitions of a hundred generations passed from before the people like a cloud, and a shout went up, " the tabu is broken ! the tabu is broken !" Thus did King Liholiho and his dreadful whiskey preach the first sermon and prepare the way for the new gospel that was speeding southward over the waves of the Atlantic. The tabu broken and destruction failing to follow the awful sacrilege, the people, with that childlike precipitancy which has always characterized them, jumped to the conclusion that their gods were a weak and wretched swindle, just as they formerly jumped to the conclusion that Captain Cook was no god, merely because he groaned, and promptly killed him without stopping to inquire whether a god might not groan as well as a man if it suited his convenience to do it ; and satisfied that the idols were powerless to protect themselves they went to work at once and pulled them down — hacked them to pieces — applied the torch — annihilated them ! The pagan priests were furious. And well they might be ; they had held the fattest offices in the land, and now they were beggared; they had been great — they had stood above the chiefs — and now they were vagabonds. They raised a revolt ; they scared a number of people into joining their standard, and Bekuokalani, an ambitious offshoot of royalty, was easily per- suaded to become their leader. In the first skirmish the idolaters triumphed over the royal army sent against them, and full of confidence they resolved to march upon Kailua. The King sent an envoy to try and conciliate them, and came very near being an envoy short by the operation ; the savages not only refused to listen to him, but wanted to kill him. So the King sent his men forth under Major General Kalaimoku and the two hosts met at Kuamoo. The battle was long and fierce — men and women fighting side by side, as was the custom — and when the day was done the rebels were flying in every direction in hopeless panic, and idolatry and the tabu were dead in the land ! AN OPPORTUNE ARRIVAL. 523 The royalists marched gayly home to Kailua glorifying the new dispensation. " There is no power in the gods," said they ; " they are a vanity and a lie. The army with idols was weak ; the army without idols was strong and victorious !" The nation was without a religion. The missionary ship arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed by providential exactness to meet the emergency, and the Gos- pel was planted as in a virgin soil. CHAPTER LXXIII. AT noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at Honaunau in his canoe — price two dollars — rea- sonable enough, for a sea voyage of eight miles, counting both ways. The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance. I cannot think of anything to liken it to but a boy's sled runner hollowed out, and that does not quite convey the correct idea. It is about fifteen feet long, high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet deep, and so narrow that if you wedged a fat man into it you might not get him out again. It sits on top of the water like a duck, but it has an outrig- ger and does not upset easily, if you keep still. This outrig- ger is formed of two long bent sticks like plow handles, which project from one side, and to their outer ends is bound a curved beam composed of an extremely light wood, which skims along the surface of the water and thus saves you from an upset on that side, while the outrigger's weight is not so easily lifted as to make an upset on the other side a thing to be greatly feared Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon this knife- blade, he is apt to reason within himself that it would be more comfortable if there were just an outrigger or so on the other side also. I had the bow seat, and Billings sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, who occupied the stern of the craft and did the pad- dling. With the first stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out A RIDE IN A CANOE. 525 from the shore like an arrow. There was not much to see. While we were on the shallow water of the reef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the large bunches of branching coral — the unique shrubbery of the sea. We lost that, though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep. But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against the crag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air. There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed with quaint caves and arches SURF-BATHING — SUCCESS. and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of the dilapidated architec- ture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of the restless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned our eyes shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green forests stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of houses in the rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily at anchor. And when these grew tire- some we dashed boldly into the midst of a school of huge, 526 NATIVE SURF BATHING. beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game of arching over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again and keep- ing it up — always circling over, in that way, like so many well- snbmerged wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, and then we were thrown upon our own resources. It did not take many minutes to discover that the sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that the weather was of a melting tempera- ture. It had a drowsing effect, too. In one place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly pro- digious billow to come along ; at the right moment he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell ! It did not seem that a lightning express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too ; but missed the connection myself. — The board struck the shore in three quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever mas- ter the art of surf-bathing thoroughly. At the end of an hour, we had made the four miles, and landed on a level point of land, upon which was a wide extent of old ruins, with many a tall cocoanut tree growing among them. Here was the ancient City of Refuge — a vast inclosure, whose stone walls were twenty feet thick at the base, SURF-BATHING — FAILURE. ESCAPE FROM VENGEANCE. 527 and fifteen feet high ; an oblong sqnare, a thousand and forty feet one way and a fraction under seven hundred the other. Within this inclosure, in early times, has been three rude temples ; each two hundred and ten feet long by one hundred wide, and thirteen high. In those days, if a man killed another anywhere on the island the relatives were privileged to take the murderer's life ; and then a chase for life and liberty began — the outlawed criminal flying through pathless forests and over mountain and plain, with his hopes fixed upon the protecting walls of the City of Eefuge, and the avenger of blood following hotly after him ! Sometimes the race was kept up to the very gates of the tem- ple, and the panting pair sped through long files of excited natives, who watched the contest with flashing eye and dilated nostril, encouraging the hunted refugee with sharp, inspiriting ejaculations, and sending up a ringing shout of exultation when the saving gates closed upon him and the cheated pursuer sank THE CITY OP EEFUGE. exhausted at the threshold. But sometimes the flying criminal fell under the hand of the avenger at the very door, when one more brave stride, one more brief second of time would have 52S PLEA OF EXECUTION. brought his feet upon the sacred ground and barred him against all harm. Where did these isolated pagans get "this idea of a City of Refuge — this ancient Oriental custom ? This old sanctuary was sacred to all — even to rebels in arms and invading armies. Once within its walls, and confession made to the priest and absolution obtained, the wretch with a price upon his head could go forth without fear and without danger — he was tabu, and to harm him was death. The routed rebels in the lost battle for idolatry fled to this place to claim sanctuary, and many were thus saved. Close to the corner of the great inclosure is a round structure of stone, some six or eight feet high, with a level top about ten or twelve in diameter. This was the place of execution. A high palisade of cocoanut piles shut out the cruel scenes from the vulgar multitude. Here criminals were killed, the flesh stripped from the bones and burned, and the bones secre- ted in holes in the body of the structure. If the man had been guilty of a high crime, the entire corpse was burned. The walls of the temple are a study. The same food for speculation that is offered the visitor to the Pyramids of Egypt he will find here — the mystery of how they were constructed by a people unacquainted with science and mechanics. The natives have no invention of their own for hoisting heavy weights, they had no beasts of burden, and they have never even shown any knowledge of the properties of the lever. Yet some of the lava blocks quarried out, brought over rough, broken ground, and built into this wall, six or seven feet from the ground, are of prodigious size and would weigh tons. How did they transport and how raise them ? Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls present a smooth front and are very creditable specimens of masonry. The blocks are of all manner of shapes and sizes, but yet are fitted together with the neatest exactness. The gradual nar- rowing of the wall from the base upward is accurately preserved. No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and compact and is capable of resisting storm and decay for centuries. Who WONDERFUL ROCKS AND THEIR LEGIONS. 529 built this temple, and how was it built, and when, are myste- ries that may never be unraveled. Outside of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone eleven feet four inches long and three feet square at the small end (it would weigh a few thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway over this district many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one day to use as a lounge ! This circumstance is established by the most reliable traditions. He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and keep an eye on his subjects at work for him and see that there was no " soldiering " done. And no doubt there was not any done to speak of, because he was a man of that sort of build that incites to attention to business on the part of an employee. He was fourteen or fifteen feet high. When he stretched himself at full length on his lounge, his legs hung down over the end, and when he snored he woke the dead. These facts are all attested by irrefragable tradition. On the other side of the temple is a monstrous seven- ton rock, eleven feet long, seven feet wide and three feet thick. It is raised a foot or THE QUEEN'S ROCK. foot and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen little stony pedestals. The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from the mountain, merely for fun (he had his own 34f 530 LAVA CURIOSITIES. notions about fun), and propped it up as we find it now and as others may find it a century hence, for it would take a score of horses to budge it from its position. They say that fifty or sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly to this rock for safety, whenever she had been making trouble with her fierce husband, and hide under it until his wrath was appeased. But these Kanakas will lie, and this statement is one of their ablest efforts — for Kaahumanu was six feet high — she was bulky — she was built like an ox — and she could no more have squeezed herself under that rock than she could have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. What could she gain by it, even if she succeeded ? To be chased and abused by a savage husband could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high spirit, yet it could never make her feel so flat as an hour's repose under that rock would. We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uni- form width ; a road paved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerable degree of engineering skill. Some say that that wise old pagan, Kamehameha I. planned and built it, but others say it was built so long before his time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed out of the tra- ditions. In either case, however, as the handiwork of an untaught and degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest. The stones are worn and smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the road has the exact appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out of Rome which one sees in pictures. The object of our tramp was to visit a great natural curiosity at the base of the foothills — a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgotten volcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain side here, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluff some fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled in the winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothed and rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal so nat- ural that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A smaller stream trickled over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid A PETRIFIED NIAGARA. 531 about thirty feet high., which has the semblance of a mass of large gnarled and knotted vines and roots and stems intricately twisted and woven together. We passed in behind the cascade and the pyramid, and found the bluff pierced by several cavernous tunnels, whose crooked courses we followed a long distance. Two of these winding tunnels stand as proof of Nature's mining abilities. Their floors are level, they are seven feet wide, and their roofs are gently arched. Their height is not uni- form, however. We passed through one a hundred feet long, which leads through a spur of the hill and opens out well up in the sheer wall of a precipice whose foot rests in the waves of the sea. It is a commodious tunnel, except that there are occasional places in it where one must stoop to pass under. The roof is lava, of course, and is thickly studded with little lava-pointed icicles an inch long, which hardened as they drip- pod. They project as closely together as the iron teeth of a com-sheller, and if one will stand up straight and walk any distance there, he can get his hair combed free of charge. CHAPTER LXXIY. "TT7TE got back to the schooner in good time, and then sailed V Y down to Kau, where we disembarked and took final leave of the vessel. Next day we bought horses and bent our way over the summer-clad mountain-terraces, toward the great volcano of Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah). We made nearly a two days' journey of it, but that was on account of laziness. To- ward sunset on the second day, we reached an elevation of some four thousand feet above sea level, and as we picked our careful way through billowy wastes of lava long generations ago stricken dead and cold in the climax of its tossing fury, we began to come upon signs of the near presence of the volcano— signs in the nature of ragged fissures that discharged jets of sulphurous vapor into the air, hot from the molten ocean down in the bow- els of the mountain. Shortly the crater came into view. I have seen Vesuvius since, but it was a mere toy, a child's volcano, a soup-kettle, compared to this. Mount Vesuvius is a shapely cone thirty-six hundred feet high ; its crater an inverted cone only three hun- dred feet deep, and not more than a thousand feet in diameter, if as much as that ; its fires meagre, modest, and docile. — But here was a vast, perpendicular, walled cellar, nine hundred feet deep in some places, thirteen hundred in others, level-floored, and ten miles in circumference ! Here was a yawning pit upon whose floor the armies of Kussia could camp, and have room to spare. Perched upon the edge of the crater, at the opposite end A VISIT TO THE CRATER. 533 from where we stood, was a small look-out house — say three miles away. It assisted us, by comparison, to comprehend and appreciate the great depth of the basin — it looked like a tiny martin-box clinging at the eaves of a cathedral. After some little time spent in resting and looking and ciphering, we hurried on to the hotel. By the path it is half a mile from the Volcano House to the lookout-house. After a hearty supper we waited until it was thoroughly dark and then started to the crater. The lirst glance in that direction revealed a scene of wild beauty. There was a heavy fog over the crater and it was splendidly illuminated by the glare from the fires below. The illumination was two miles wide and a mile high, perhaps ; and if you ever, on a dark night and at a distance beheld the light from thirty or forty blocks of distant build- ings all on fire at once, re- flected strongly against over- hanging clouds, you can form a fair idea of what this looked like. A colossal column of cloud towered to a great height in the air immediately above the crater, and the outer swell of every one of its vast folds was dyed with a rich crimson luster, which was subdued to a pale rose tint in the depressions between. It glowed like a muffled torch and stretched upward to a dizzy height toward the zenith. I thought it just possible that its like had' not been seen since the children of Israel wandered on their long march through the desert so many centuries ago over a path illuminated by the mysterious THE PILLAR OF F1KK. 534 THE FLOOK OF THE ABYSS. " pillar of fire." And I was sure that I now had a vivid con- ception of what the majestic "pillar of fire" was like, which almost amounted to a revelation. Arrived at the little thatched lookout house, we rested our elbows on the railing in front and looked abroad over the wide crater and down over the sheer precipice at the seething fires beneath us. The view was a startling improvement on my daylight experience. I turned to see the effect on the balance of the company and found the reddest-faced set of men I almost ever saw. In the strong light every countenance glowed like red-hot iron, every shoulder was suffused with crimson and shaded rearward into dingy, shapeless obscurity ! The place below looked like the infernal regions and these men like half-cooled devils just come up on a furlough. I turned my eyes upon the volcano again. The "cellar" was tolerably well lighted up. For a mile and a half in front of us and half a mile on either side, the floor of the abyss was magnificently illuminated ; beyond these limits the mists hung down their gauzy curtains and cast a deceptive gloom over all that made the twinkling fires in the remote corners of the crater seem countless leagues removed — made them seem like the camp-fires of a great army far away. Here was room for the imagination to work ! You could imagine those lights the width of a continent away — and that hid- den under the intervening darkness were hills, and winding rivers, and weary wastes of plain and desert — and even then the tremendous vista stretched on, and on, and on ! — to the fires and far beyond ! You could not compass it — it was the idea of eternity made tangible — and the longest end of it made vis- ible to the naked eye ! The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was as black as ink, and apparently smooth and level ; but over a mile square of it was ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire ! It looked like a colossal railroad map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight sky. Imagine it — im- MAGNIFICENT SPECTACLE. 535 agine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled net-work of angry fire! Here and there were gleaming holes a hundred feet in diam- eter, broken in the dark crust, and in them the melted lava — the color a dazzling white just tinged with yellow — was boiling THE CRATER. and surging furiously ; and from these holes branched number- less bright torrents in many directions, like the spokes of a wheel, and kept a tolerably straight course for a while and then 536 A LAKE OF FIRE. swept round in huge rainbow curves, or made a long succession of sharp worm-fence angles, which looked precisely like the fiercest jagged lightning. These streams met other streams, and they mingled with arid crossed and recrossed each other in every conceivable direction, like skate tracks on a popular skat- ing ground. Sometimes streams twenty or thirty feet wide flowed from the holes to some distance without dividing — and through the opera-glasses we could see that they ran down small, steep hills and were genuine cataracts of fire, white at their source, but soon cooling and turning to the richest red, grained with alternate lines of black and gold. Every now and then masses of the dark crust broke away and floated slowly down these streams like rafts down a river. Occasionally the molten lava flowing under the superincumbent crust broke through — split a dazzling streak, from five hundred to a thou- sand feet long, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of the cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice when a great river breaks up, plunged downward and were swallowed in the crimson cauldron. Then the wide expanse of the " thaw " maintained a ruddy glow for a while, but shortly cooled and became black and level again. During a " thaAV," every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering white border which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays, which were a flaming yellow where they joined the white border, and from thence toward their points tapered into glowing crimson, then into a rich, pale carmine, and finally into a faint blush that held its own a moment and then dimmed and turned black. Some of the streams preferred to mingle together in a tangle of fantastic circles, and then they looked something like the confusion of ropes one sees on a ship's deck when she has just taken in sail and dropped anchor — provided one can imagine those ropes on fire. Through the glasses, the little fountains scattered about looked very beautiful. They boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and discharged sprays of stringy red fire — of about the consistency of mush, for instance — from ten to fifteen feet into the air, HISSING OF THE BUBBLING LAVA. 537 along with a shower of brilliant white sparks — a quaint and unnatural mingling of gouts of blood and snow-flakes ! "We had circles and serpents and streaks of lightning all twined and wreathed and tied together, without a break throughout an area more than a mile square (that amount of ground was covered, though it was not strictly " square "), and it was with a feeling of placid exultation that we reflected that many years had elapsed since any visitor had seen such a splen- did display — since any visitor had seen anything more than the now snubbed and insignificant "North" and "South" lakes in action. We had been reading old files of Hawaiian news- papers and the " Record Book " at the Volcano House, and were posted. I could see the North Lake lying out on the black floor away off in the outer edge of our panorama, and knitted to it by a web-work of lava streams. In its individual capacity it looked very little more respectable than a schoolhouse on fire. True, it was about nine hundred feet long and two or three hundred wide, but then, under the present circumstances, it necessarily appeared rather insignificant, and besides it was so distant from us. I forgot to say that the noise made by the bubbling lava is not great, heard as we heard it from our lofty perch. It makes three distinct sounds — a rushing, a hissing, and a coughing or puffing sound ; and if you stand on the brink and close your eyes it is no trick at all to imagine that you are sweeping down a river on a large low-pressure steamer, and that you hear the hissing of the steam about her boilers, the puffing from her escape-pipes and the churning rush of the water abaft her wheels. The smell of sulphur is strong, but not unpleasant to a sinner. We left the lookout house at ten o'clock in a half cooked condition, because of the heat from Pele's furnaces, and wrap- ping up in blankets, for the night was cold, we returned to our Hotel CHAPTER LXXV. THE next night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of the crater, for we desired to traverse its floor and see the " North Lake " (of fire) which lay two miles away, toward the further wall. After dark half a dozen of ns set out, with lan- terns and native guides, and climbed down a crazy, thousand- foot pathway in a crevice fractured in the crater wall, and reached the bottom in safety. The irruption of the previous evening had spent its force and the floor looked black and cold ; but when we ran out upon it we found it hot yet, to the feet, and it was likewise riven with crevices which revealed the underlying fires gleaming vindictively. A neighboring cauldron was threatening to over- flow, and this added to the dubiousness of the situation. So the native guides refused to continue the venture, and then every body deserted except a stranger named Marlette. He said he had been in the crater a dozen times in daylight and believed he could find his way through it at night. He thought that a run of three hundred yards would carry us over the hot- test part of the floor and leave us our shoe-soles. His pluck gave me back-bone. We took one lantern and instructed the guides to hang the other to the roof of the look-out house to serve as a beacon for us in case we got lost, and then the party started back up the precipice and Marlette and I mads our run. We skipped over the hot floor and over the red crevices with brisk dispatch and reached the cold lava safe but with pretty warm feet. Then we took things leisurely and comfortably, A VISIT TO THE NORTH LAKE. 539 jumping tolerably wide and probably bottomless chasms, and threading our way through picturesque lava upheavals with considerable confidence. When we got fairly away from the cauldrons of boiling fire, we seemed to be in a gloomy desert, and a suffocatingly dark one, surrounded by dim walls that seemed to tower to the sky. The only cheerful objects were the glinting stars high overhead. By and by Marlette shouted " Stop !" I never stopped quicker in my life. I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He said we must not try to go on till we found it again, for we were surrounded with beds of rotten lava through which we could easily break and plunge down a thousand feet. I thought eight hundred would answer for me, and was about to say so when Marlette partly proved his statement by accidentally crushing through and disappear- BKEAKING THROUGH. ing to his arm-pits. He got out and we hunted for the path with the lantern. He said there was only one path and that it was but vaguely defined. We could not find it. The lava surface was all alike in the lantern light. But he was an ingenious man. He said it was not the lantern that had informed him that we were out of the path, bat his feet. He had noticed a crisp grinding of fine lava-needles under his feet, and some instinct reminded him that in the path these were all worn away. So he put the lantern behind him, and began to search with his boots instead of his eyes. It was good sagacity. The 540 FOUNTAINS OF FIRE first time his foot touched a surface that did not grind under it he announced that the trail was found again ; and after that we kept up a sharp listening for the rasping sound and it always warned us in time. It was a long tramp, but an exciting one. We reached the North Lake between ten and eleven o'clock, and sat down on a huge overhanging lava-shelf, tired but satisfied. The specta- cle presented was worth coming double the distance to see. Under us, and stretching away before us, was a heaving sea of molten fire of seemingly limitless extent. The glare from it was so blinding that it was some time before we could bear to look upon it steadily. It was like gazing at the sun at noon- day, except that the glare was not quite so white. At unequal distances all around the shores of the lake were nearly white- hot chimneys or hollow drums of lava, four or five feet high, and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays of lava- gouts and gem spangles, some white, some red and some golden — a ceaseless bombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachable splendor. The more distant jets, sparkling up through an intervening gossamer veil of vapor, SURGING BILLOWS OF FLAME. 541 seemed miles away ; and the further the curving ranks of fiery fountains receded, the more fairy-like and beautiful they appeared. Now and then the surging bosom of the lake under our noses would calm down ominously and seem to be gathering strength for an enterprise ; and then all of a sudden a red dome of lava of the bulk of an ordinary dwelling would heave itself aloft like an escaping balloon, then burst asunder, and out of its heart would flit a pale-green film of vapor, and float upward and vanish in the darkness — a released soul soaring homeward from captivity with the damned, no doubt. The crashing plunge of the ruined dome into the lake again would send a world of seething billows lashing against the shores and shaking the foundations of our perch. By and by, a loosened mass of the hanging shelf we sat on tumbled into the lake, jarring the surroundings like an earthquake and delivering a suggestion that may have been intended for a hint, and may not. We did not wait to see. We got lost again on our way back, and were more than an hour hunting for the path. We were where we could see the beacon lantern at the look-out house at the time, but thought it was a star and paid no attention to it. We reached the hotel at two o'clock in the morning pretty well fagged out. Kilauea never overflows its vast crater, but bursts a passage for its lava through the mountain side when relief is necessary, and then the destruction is fearful. About 1840 it rent its overburdened stomach and sent a broad river of fire careering down to the sea, which swept away forests, huts, plantations and every thing else that lay in its path. The stream was Jive miles broad, in places, and two hundred feet deep, and the dis- tance it traveled was forty miles. It tore up and bore away acre-patches of land on its bosom like rafts — rocks, trees and all intact. At night the red glare was visible a hundred miles at sea ; and at a distance of forty miles fine print could be read at midnight. The atmosphere was poisoned with sulphurous vapors and choked with falling ashes, pumice stones and cin- ders ; countless columns of smoke rose up and blended together in a tumbled canopy that hid the heavens and glowed with a 542 STREAMS OF BURNING LAVA. ruddy flush reflected from the fires below ; here and there jets of lava sprung hundreds of feet into the air and burst into rock- et-sprays that returned to earth in a crimson rain ; and all the while the laboring mountain shook with Nature's great palsy - and voiced its distress in moanings and the muffled booming of subterranean thunders. Fishes were killed for twenty miles along the shore, where PRODIGIOUS TIDAL-WAVE. 543 the lava entered the sea. The earthquakes caused some loss of human life, and a prodigious tidal wave swept inland, carry- ing every thing before it and drowning a number of natives. The devastation consummated along the route traversed by the river of lava was complete and incalculable. Only a Pompeii and a Herculaneum were needed at the foot of Kilauea to make the story of the irruption immortal. OHAPTEE LXXTL ~TT7"E rode horseback all around the island of Hawaii (the ▼ ▼ crooked road making the distance two hundred miles), and enjoyed the journey very much. We. were more than a week making the trip, because our Kanaka horses would not go by a house or a hut without stopping — whip and spur could not alter their minds about it, and so we finally found that it economized time to let them have their way. Upon inquiry the mystery was explained : the natives are such thorough- going gossips that they never pass a house without stopping to swap news, and consequently their horses learn to regard that sort of thing as an essential part of the whole duty of man, and his salvation not to be compassed without it. However, at a former crisis of my life I had once taken an aristocratic young lady out driving, behind a horse that had just retired from a long and honorable career as the moving impulse of a milk wagon, and so this present experience awoke a reminiscent sad- ness in me in place of the exasperation more natural to the occasion. I remembered how helpless I was that day, and how humiliated ; how ashamed I was of having intimated to the girl that I had always owned the horse and was accustomed to grandeur ; how hard I tried to appear easy, and even vivacious, under suffering that was consuming my vitals ; how placidly and maliciously the girl smiled, and kept on smiling, while my hot blushes baked themselves into a permanent blood-pudding in my face ; how the horse ambled from one side of the street to the other and waited complacently before every third house THE RETIRED MILK HORSE 545 two minutes and a quarter while I belabored his back and re- viled him in my heart ; how I tried to keep him from turning corners, and failed ; how I moved heaven and earth to get him out of town, and did not succeed ; how he traversed the entire settlement and delivered imaginary milk at a hundred and sixty-two different domiciles, and how he finally brought up at a dairy depot and refused to budge further, thus rounding and TKIP ON THE MILKV WAV. completing the revealment of what the plebeian service of his life had been ; how, in eloquent silence, I walked the girl home, and how, when I took leave of her, her parting remark scorched my soul and appeared to blister me all over : she said that my horse was a fine, capable animal, and I must have taken great comfort in him in my time — but that if I w r ould take along some milk-tickets next time, and appear to deliver them at the various halting places, it might expedite his movements a little. There was a coolness between us after that. In one place in the island of Hawaii, we saw a laced and 35f 546 ANOTHER HORSE STORY. ruffled cataract of limpid water leaping from a sheer precipice fifteen hundred feet high ; but that sort of scenery finds its stanchest ally in the arithmetic rather than in spectacular effect. If one desires to be so stirred by a poem of Nature wrought in the happily commingled graces of picturesque rocks, glimpsed distances, foliage, color, shifting lights and shadows, and falling water, that the tears almost come into his eyes so potent is the charm exerted, he need not go away from America to enjoy such an experience. The Rainbow Fall, in Watkins Glen (NV Y.), on the Erie railway, is an example. It would recede into pitiable insignificance if the callous tourist drew an arith- metic on it ; but left to compete for the honors simply on scenic grace and beauty — the grand, the august and the sublime being barred the contest — it could challenge the old world and the new to produce its peer. In one locality, on our journey, we saw some horses that had been born and reared on top of the mountains, above the range of running water, and consequently they had never drank that fluid in their lives, but had been always accustomed to quenching their thirst by eating dew-laden or shower-wetted leaves. And now it was destructively funny to see them sniff suspiciously at a pail of water, and then put in their noses and try to take a bite out of the fluid, as if it were a solid. Find- ing it liquid, they would snatch away their heads and fall to trembling, snorting and showing other evidences of fright. When they became convinced at last that the water was friendly and harmless, they thrust in their noses up to their eyes, brought out a mouthful of the water, and proceeded to chew it complacently. We saw a man coax, kick and spur one of them five or ten minutes before he could make it cross a running stream. It spread its nostrils, distended its eyes and trembled all over, just as horses customarily do in the presence of a ser- pent — and for aught I know it thought the crawling stream was a serpent. In due course of time our journey came to an end at Ka- waehae (usually pronounced To-a-At— and before we find fault with this elaborate orthographical method of arriving at such A VIEW IN THE IAO VALLEY A PICNICING EXCURSION. 547 an unostentatious result, let us lop off the ugh from our word " though "). I made this horseback trip on a mule. I paid ten dollars for him at Kau (Kah-oo), added four to get him shod, rode him two hundred miles, and then sold him for fifteen dol- lars. I mark the circumstance with a white stone (in the ab- sence of chalk — for I never saw a white stone that a body could mark anything with, though out of respect for the ancients I have tried it often enough) ; for up to that day and date it was the first strictly commercial transaction I had ever entered into, and come out winner. We returned to Honolulu, and from thence sailed to the island of Maui, and spent several weeks there very pleasantly. I still remember, with a sense of indo- lent luxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge there, called the Iao Valley. The trail lay along the edge of a brawl- ing stream in the bottom of the gorge — a shady route, for it was well roofed with the verdant domes of forest trees. Through openings in the foliage we glimpsed picturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes and new charms with every step of our progress. Perpendicular walls from one to three thousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously plumed with varied foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns. Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shin- ing fronts, mottling them with blots ; billowy masses of white vapor hid the turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background of gleaming green crags and cones that came and went, through the veiling mists, like islands drifting in a fog; sometimes the cloudy curtain descended till half the canon wall was hidden, then shredded gradually away till only airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it — then swept aloft and left it glorified in the sun again. Now and then, as our posi- tion changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin of castellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hung with garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back again and hid themselves once more in the foliage. Presently a verdure-clad needle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner, and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley. It seemed to 548 DEAD VOLCANO OF HALEAKALA. me that if Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made — therefore, why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump ? But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Halea- kala — which means, translated, " the house of the sun." We climbed a thousand feet up the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon ; then camped, and next day climbed the remain- ing nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit, where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night. With the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us. Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silent wonders. The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surface seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad valley below appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantations alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished to mossy tufts. Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely grouped together ; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at these things — not down. We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowl ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted away into the sky above us ! It was curious ; and not only curious, but ag- gravating ; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb ten thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery. However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it ; for, all we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds. Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this singular fraud perpe- trated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy. I have spoken of the outside view — but we had an inside one, too. That was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks, half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering down the almost perpendic- ular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump ; kicking up wiust-clouds wherever they struck ; diminishing to our view as they sped farther into distance ; growing invisible, finally, and COMPARED WITH VESUVIUS. 549 only betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust ; and com- ing to a halt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five MAGNIFICENT SPORT. hundred feet down from where they started ! It was magnificent sport. We wore ourselves out at it. The crater of Vesuvius, as I have before remarked, is a modest pit about a thou- sand feet deep and three thousand in circumference ; that of Kilauea is somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference. But what are either of them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala? I will not offer any figures of my own, but give official ones— those of Commander Wilkes, XL S. K, who surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty-seven miles in circumference ! If it had a level bottom it would make a fine site for a city like London. It must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplating in the old days when its fur- naces gave full rein to their anger. Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and the valley ; then they came in couples and groups ; then in imposing squadrons ; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidly together, a thousand 550 AN INSIDE VIEW. feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean — not a ves- tige of anything was left in view but just a little of the rim of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, and gathered and sunk and blended to- gether till the abyss was stored to the brim with a fleecy fog). Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor stretched without a break — not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow creases be- tween, and with here and there stately piles of vapory archi- tecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain — some near at hand, some in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony of the remote solitudes. There was little con- versation, for the impressive scene overawed speech. I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pin- nacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world. While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection appeared in the East. A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste, flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of rich coloring. It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of it will remain with me always. CHAPTER LXXVII. I STUMBLED upon one curious character in the Island of Mani. He became a sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse- of him was in a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occupied a chair at the opposite side of the apartment, and sat eyeing our party with interest for some minutes, and listening as critically to what we were saying as if he fancied we were talking to him and expecting him to reply. I thought it very sociable in a stranger. Pres- ently, in the course of conversation, I made a statement bearing upon the subject under discussion — and I made it with due modesty, for there was nothing extraordinary about it, and it was only put forth in illustration of a point at issue. I had barely finished when this person spoke out with rapid utterance and feverish anxiety : " Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought to have seen my chimney — you ought to have seen my chimney, sir ! Smoke ! I wish I may hang if — Mr. Jones, you remember that chimney — you must remember that chim- ney ! No, no — I recollect, now, you warn't living on this side of the island then. But I am telling you nothing but the truth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that chimney didn't smoke so that the smoke actually got caked in it and I had to dig it out with a pickaxe ! You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff's got a hunk of it which I dug out before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easy for you to go and examine for yourselves." The interruption broke up the conversation, which had al- 552 STORY OF THE BIG TREE. ready "begun to lag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two, and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest. Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up and detected this same man boring through and through me with his intense eye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety to speak. The moment I paused, he said : " Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be considered remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir, contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, it instantly becomes commonplace. No, not that — for I will not speak so discourteously of any experi- ence in the career of a stranger and a gentleman — but I am obliged to say that you could not, and you would not ever again refer to this tree as a large one, if you could behold, as I have, the great Yakmatack tree, in the island of Ounaska, sea of Kamtcliatka — a tree, sir, not one inch less than four hundred and fifteen feet in solid diameter ! — and I wish I may die in a minute if it isn't so ! Oh, you needn't look so questioning, gentlemen ; here's old Cap Saltmarsh can say whether I know what I'm talking about or not. I showed him the tree." Captain Saltmarsh. — " Come, now, cat your anchor, lad — ■ you're heaving too taut. You promised to show me that stun- ner, and I walked more than eleven mile with you through the cussedest jungle /ever see, a hunting for it ; but the tree you showed me finally warn't as big around as a beer cask, and you know that your own self,.Markiss." " Hear the man talk ! Of course the tree was reduced that way, but didn't I explain it ? Answer me, didn't I ? Didn't I say I wished you could have seen it when I first saw it ? When you got up on your ear and called me names, and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling, didn't I explain to you that all the whale-ships in the North Seas had been wooding oif of it for more than twenty-seven years ? And did you s'pose the tree could last ior-ever y con-found it ? I MY MARE MARGARETTA. 553 don't see why yon want to keep back things that way, and try to injure a person that's never done you any harm." Somehow this man's presence made me uncomfortable, and I was glad when a native arrived at that moment to say that ELEVEN MILES TO SEE. Muckawow, the most companionable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of the Islands, desired us to come over and help him enjoy a missionary whom he had found trespassing on his grounds. I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a statement I was making for the instruction of a group of friends and acquaintances, and which made no pretence of being extra- ordinary, a familiar voice chimed instantly in on the heels of my last word, and said : " But, my dear sir, there was nothing remarkable about that horse, or the circumstance either — nothing in the world ! I mean no sort of offence when I say it, sir, but you really do not know anything whatever about speed. Bless your heart, if you could only have seen my mare Margaretta ; there was a beast ! — there was lightning for you ! Trot ! Trot is no name 554 AN EIGHTEEN MILE RAC for it — she flew ! How she could whirl a buggy along ! I started her out once, sir — Colonel Bilgewater, you recollect that animal perfectly well — I started her out about thirty or thirty-live yards ahead of the awfullest storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us upwards of eighteen miles ! It did, by the everlasting hills ! And I'm telling you nothing but the unvarnished truth when I say that* not one single drop of rain fell on me — not a single drop, sir ! And I swear to it ! But my dog was a-swimming behind the wagon all the way I" CHASED BY A STORM. For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed to meet this person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful to me. But one evening I dropped in on Captain Per- kins and his friends, and we had a sociable time. About ten o'clock I chanced to be talking about a merchant friend of mine, and without really intending it, the remark slipped out that he was a little mean and parsimonious about paying his workmen. Instantly, through the steam of a hot whiskey punch on the opposite side of the room, a remembered voice shot — and for a moment I trembled on the imminent verge of profanity : THE INCORPORATED COMPANY OF MEAN MEN. 555 " Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that as a surprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant of the very A B C of meanness ! ignorant as the unborn babe ! ignorant as unborn twins ! You don't know any thing about it ! It is pitiable to see you, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making such an enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your ignorance is per- fectly humiliating ! Look me in the eye, if you please ; look me in the eye. John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in the State of Mississippi — boyhood friend of mine — bosom comrade in later years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us now. John James Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining Company in California to do some blasting for them — the " Incorporated Company of Mean Men," the boys used to call it. Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an awful blast of powder, and was stand- ing over it ramming it down with an iron crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing struck a spark and fired the powder, and scat ! away John God- frey whizzed like a sky- rocket, him and his crow- bar ! Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a boy — and he kept going on up higher and higher, till he didn't look any big- ger than a doll — and he kept on going up higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a little small bee — and then LEAVING WORK. 556 SAD FATE OF A LIAR. he went out of sight ! Presently he came in sight again, look- ing like a little small bee — and he came along down further and further, till he looked as big as a doll again — and down further and further, till he was as big as a boy again — and fur- ther and further, till he was a full-sized man once more ; and then him and his crowbar came awh-izzing down and lit right exactly in the same old tracks and went to r-ramming down, and r-ramming down, and r-ramming down again, just the same as if nothing had happened ! Now do you know, that poor cuss warn't gone only sixteen minutes, and yet that Incorpo- rated Company of Mean Men docked him for the lost time !'> I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home. And on my diary I entered "another night spoiled" by this offensive loafer. And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company. And the very next day I packed up, out of all patience, and left the Island. Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar. The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end of which time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyingly and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly disinterested persons. The man Markiss was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the doors and windows securely fastened on the inside), dead ; and on his breast was pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to suspect no innocent person of having any thing to do with his death, for that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the jury brought in the astounding verdict that deceased came to his death " by the hands of some person or persons unknown !" They explained that the perfectly unde- viating consistency of Markiss's character for thirty years tow- ered aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that what- ever statement he chose to make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance as a lie. And they furthermore stated their belief that he was not dead, and instanced the EVIDENCE OF INSANITY 557 strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that he was dead — and beseeched the coroner to delay the funeral as long as possible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of Lahaina the coffin stood open for seven days, and then even the loyal jury gave him up. But they sat on him again, and changed their verdict to " suicide induced by mental aberra- tion " — because, said they, with penetration, " he said he was dead, and he was dead ; and would he have told the truth if he had been in his right mind ? No> sir." CHAPTEE LXXVIII. AFTER half a year's luxurious vagrancy in the islands, I took shipping in a sailing vessel, and regretfully re- turned to San Francisco — a voyage in every way delightful, but without an incident : unless lying two long weeks in a dead calm, eighteen hundred miles from the nearest land, may rank as an incident. Schools of whales grew so tame that day after day they played about the ship among the porpoises and the sharks without the least apparent fear of us, and we pelted them with empty bottles for lack of better sport. Twenty-four hours afterward these bottles would be still lying on the glassy water under our noses, showing that the ship had not moved out of her place in all that time. The calm was absolutely breathless, and the surface of the sea absolutely without a wrinkle. For a whole day and part of a night we lay so close to another ship that had drifted to our vicinity, that we carried on conver- sations with her passengers, introduced each other by name, and became pretty intimately acquainted with people we had never heard of before, and have never heard of since. This was the only vessel we saw during the whole lonely voyage. We had fifteen passengers, and to show how hard pressed they were at last for occupation and amusement, I will mention that the gentlemen gave a good part of their time every day, during the calm, to trying to sit on an empty champagne bottle (lying on its side), and thread a needle without touching their heels to the deck, or falling over ; and the ladies sat in the shade of the PREPARATION FOR LECTURING. 550 OUR AMUSEMENTS. mainsail, and watched the enterprise with absorbing interest. "We were at sea five Sundays ; and yet, but for the almanac, we never would have known but that all the other days were Sundays too. I was home again, in San Francisco, without means and without em- ployment. I tortured my brain for a saving scheme of some kind, and at last a public lecture occurred to me! I sat down and wrote one, in a fever of hopeful anticipation. I showed it to several friends, but they all shook their heads. They said nobody would come to hear me, and I would make a humiliating fail- ure of it. They said that as I had never spoken in public, I would break down in the delivery, anyhow. I was disconsolate now. But at last an editor slapped me on the back and told me to "go ahead." He said, " Take the largest house in town, and charge a dollar a ticket." The audacity of the proposition was charming ; it seemed fraught with practical worldly wis- dom, however. The proprietor of the several theatres endorsed the advice, and said I might have his handsome new opera-house at half price — fifty dollars. In sheer desperation I took it — on credit, for sufficient reasons. In three days I did a hundred and fifty dollars' worth of printing and advertising, and was the most distressed and frightened creature on the Pacific coast. I could not sleep — who could, under such circumstances ? For other people there was facetiousness in the last line of my posters, but to me it was plaintive with a pang when I wrote it : " Doors open at 7£. The trouble will begin at 8." That line has done good service since. Showmen have borrowed it frequently. I have even seen it appended to a 560 VALUABLE ASSISTANTS. newspaper advertisement reminding school pnpils in vacation what time next term would begin. As those three days of suspense dragged by, I grew more and more unhappy. I had sold two hundred tickets among my personal friends, but I feared they might not come. My lecture, which had seemed "humor- ous" to me, at first, grew steadily more and more dreary, till not a vestige of fun seemed left, and I grieved that I could not bring a coffin on the stage and turn the thing into a funeral. I was so panic-stricken, at last, that I went to three old friends, giants in stature, cordial by nature, and stormy- voiced, and said : " This thing is going to be a failure ; the jokes in it are so dim that nobody will ever see them ; I would like to have you sit in the parquette, and help me through." They said they would. Then I went to the wife of a pop- ular citizen, and said that if she was willing to do me a very great kindness, I would be glad if she and her husband would sit prominently in the left-hand stage-box, where the whole house could see them. I explained that I should need help, and would turn toward her and smile, as a signal, when I had been delivered of an obscure joke — " and then," I added, " don't wait to investigate, but respond ! " She promised. Down the street I met a man I never had seen before. He had been drinking, and was beaming with smiles and good nature. He said : " My name's Sawyer. You don't know me, but that don't matter. I haven't got a cent, but if you knew how bad I wanted to laugh, you'd give me a ticket. Come, now, what do you say?" " Is your laugh hung on a hair-trigger ? — that is, is it criti- cal, or can you get it off easy f " My drawling infirmity of speech so affected him that he laughed a specimen or two that struck me as being about the article I wanted, and I gave him a ticket, and appointed him to sit in the second circle, in the centre, and be responsible for that division of the house. I gave him minute instructions about how to detect indistinct jokes, and then went away, and left him chuckling placidly over the novelty of the idea. MY FIRST ATTEMPT. 561 I ate nothing on the last of the three eventful days — I only suffered. I had advertised that on this third day the box-office would be opened for the sale of reserved seats. I crept down to the theatre at four in the afternoon to see if any sales had been made. The ticket seller was gone, the box-office was locked up. I had to swallow suddenly, or my heart would have got out. " ISTo sales," I said to myself; " I might have known it." I thought of suicide, pretended illness, flight. I thought of these things in earnest, for I was very miserable and scared. But of course I had to drive them away, and prepare to meet my fate. I could not wait for half-past seven — I wanted to face the horror, and end it — the feeling of many a man doomed to hang, no doubt. I went down back streets at six o'clock, and entered the theatre by the back door. I stumbled my way in the dark among the ranks of canvas scen- ery, and stood on the stage. The house was gloo- my and silent, and its emp- tiness depressing. I went into the dark among the scenes again, and for an hour and a half gave myself up to the horrors, wholly unconscious of everything else. Then I heard a mur- mur; it rose higher and higher, and ended in a crash, mingled with cheers. It made my hair raise, it was so close to me, and so loud. There was a pause, and then another; pres- ently came a third, and before I well knew what I was about, I was in the middle of the stage, staring at a sea of faces, bewildered 36f SEVEKE CASE OF STAGE-FRIGHT. 562 THE AUDIENCE CARRIED. by the fierce glare of the lights, and quaking in every limb with a terror that seemed like to take my life away. The house was full, aisles and all ! The tumult in my heart and brain and legs continued a full minute before I could gain any command over myself. Then I recognized the charity and the friendliness in the faces before me, and little by little my fright melted away, and I began to talk Within three or four minutes I was comfortable, and even content. My three chief allies, with three auxiliaries, were on hand, in the parquette, all sitting together, all armed with bludgeons, and all ready to make an onslaught upon the feeblest joke that might show its head. And whenever a joke did fall, their bludgeons came down and their faces seemed to split from ear to ear ; Saw- yer, whose hearty counte- nance was seen looming redly in the centre of the second circle, took it up, and the house was carried handsomely. Inferior jokes Presently I delivered a bit of SAWYER IN THE CIRCLE. never fared so royally before. A PATHETIC JOKE. 563 serious matter with impressive unction (it was my pet), and the audience listened with an absorbed Irtish that gratified me more than any applause ; and as I dropped the last word of the clause, I happened to turn and catch Mrs. 's intent and waiting eye ; my conversation with her flashed upon me, and in spite of all I could do I smiled. She took it for the signal, and promptly delivered a mellow laugh that touched off the whole audience ; and the explosion that followed was the triumph of the evening. I thought that that honest man Sawyer would choke himself; and as for the bludgeons, they performed like pile-drivers. But my poor little morsel of pathos was ruined. It was taken in good faith as an inten- tional joke, and the prize one of the entertainment, and I wisely let it go at that. All the papers were kind in the morning; my appetite returned ; I had abundance of money. All's well that ends well. CHAPTEK LXXIX. I LAUNCHED out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness. I had the field all to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity in the Pacific market. They are not so rare, now, I suppose. I took an old personal friend along to play agent for me, and for two or three weeks we roamed through Nevada and California and had a very cheerful time of it. Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stage- coaches were robbed within two miles of the town. The dar- ing act was committed just at dawn, by six masked men, who sprang up alongside the coaches, presented revolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers, and commanded a general dismount. Everybody climbed down, and the robbers took their watches and every cent they had. Then they took gun- powder and blew up the express specie boxes and got their contents. The leader of the robbers was a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous manner and his intrepidity was in everybody's mouth when we arrived. The night after instructing Yirginia, I walked over the desolate " divide " and down to Gold Hill, and lectured there. The lecture done, I stopped to talk with a friend, and did not start back till eleven. The " divide " was high, unoccupied ground, between the towns, the scene of twenty midnight murders and a hundred robberies. As we climbed up and stepped out on this eminence, the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at our backs, and the night closed down gloomy ATTACKED BY HIGHWAYMEN. 565 and dismal. A sharp wind swept the place, too, and chilled our perspiring bodies through. " I tell you I don't like this place at night," said Mike the agent. " Well, don't speak so loud," I said. " You needn't remind anybody that we are here." Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction of Virginia — a man, evidently. He came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let him pass ; he stepped in the way and con- fronted me again. Then I saw that he had a mask on and was holding something in my face — I heard a click-click and recognized a revolver in dim outline. I pushed the barrel aside with my hand and said : "Don't!" He ejaculated sharply : " Your watch ! Your money ! " I said : "You can have them with pleasure — but take the pistol away from my face, please. It makes me shiver." " No remarks ! Hand out your money ! " " Certainly— I—" " Put up your hands ! Don't you go for a weapon ! Put 'em up ! Higher ! " I held them above my head. A pause. Then : " Are you going to hand out your money or not V ' I dropped my hands to my pockets and said : Certainly! I—" " Put up your hands / Do you want your head blown off? Higher !" I put them above my head again. Another pause. Are you going to hand out your money or not f Ah-ah^ again ? Put up your hands ! By George, you want the head shot off you awful bad ! " " Well, friend, I'm trying my best to please you. You telJ 566 "PUT UP YOUR HANDS." me to give up my money, and when I reach for it you tell me to put up my hands. If you would only — . Oh, now — don't ! All six of you at me ! That other man will get away while.— Now please take some of those revolvers out of my face — do, if you please ! Every time one of them clicks, my liver comes up into my throat ! If you have a mother — any of you — or if any of you have ever had a mother — or a — grandmother — or a—" " Cheese it ! Will you give up your money, or have we got to — . There-there — none of that ! Put up your hands ! " " Gentlemen — I know you are gentlemen by your — " " Silence ! If you want to be facetious, young man, there are times and places more fitting. This is a serious business." "You prick the marrow of my opinion. The funerals I have attended in my time were comedies compared to it. Now / think— " " Curse your palaver ! Your money ! — your money ! — your money ! Hold ! — put up your hands ! " " Gentlemen, listen to reason. You see how I am situated — now dovbt put those pistols so close — I smell the powder. You see how I am situated. If I had four hands — so that I could hold up two and — " " Throttle him ! Gag him ! Kill him !" " Gentlemen, don't ! Nobody' <* watching the other fellow. Why don't some of you — . Ouch ! Take it away, please ! Gentlemen, you see that I've got to hold up my hands ; and so I can't take out my money — but if you'll be so kind as to take it out for me, I will do as much for you some — " " Search him Beauregard — and stop his jaw with a bullet, quick, if he wags it again. Help Beauregard, Stonewall." Then three of them, with the small, spry leader, adjourned to Mike and fell to searching him. I was so excited that my lawless fancy tortured me to ask my two men all manner of facetious questions about their rebel brother-generals of the South, but, considering the order they had received, it was but common prudence to keep still. When everything had FORMIDABLE AND RENOWNED FOES. 567 been taken from me, — watch, money, and a multitude of trifles of small value, — I supposed I was free, and forthwith put my cold hands into my empty pockets and began an inoffensive A PREDICAMENT. jig to warm my feet and stir up some latent courage— but in- stantly all pistols were at my head, and the order came again: " Be still ! Put up your hands ! And keep them up ! " They stood Mike up alongside of me, with strict orders to keep his hands above his head, too, and then the chief high- wayman said : "Beauregard, hide behind that boulder; Phil Sheridan, you hide behind that other one ; Stonewall Jackson, put your- self behind that sage-bush there. Keep your pistols bearing on these fellows, and if they take down their hands within ten minutes, or move a single peg, let them have it ! " Then three disappeared in the gloom toward the several ambushes, and the other three disappeared down the road to- ward Yirginia. It was depressingly still, and miserably cold. JSTow this whole thing was a practical joke, and the robbers were per- sonal friends of ours in disguise, and twenty more lay hidden 56S THE WHOLE THING A JOKE. within ten feet of us during the whole operation, listening. Mike knew all this, and was in the joke, but I suspected noth- ing of it. To me it was most uncomfortably genuine. When we had stood there in the middle of the road five minutes, like a couple of idiots, with our hands aloft, freezing to death by inches, Mike's interest in the joke began to wane. He said : " The time's up, now, aint it ? " " No, you keep still. Do you want to take any chances with those bloody savages % " Presently Mike said : " Now the time's up, anyway. I'm freezing." " Well freeze. Better freeze than carry your brains home in a basket. Maybe the time is up, but how do we know ? — got no watch to tell by. I mean to give them good measure. I calculate to stand here fifteen minutes or die. Don't you move." So, without knowing it, I was making one joker very sick of his contract. When we took our arms down at last, they were achiug with cold and fatigue, and when we went sneak- ing off, the dread I was in that the time might not yet be up and that we would feel bullets in a moment, was not sufficient to draw all my attention from the misery that racked my stiffened body. The joke of these highwayman friends of ours was mainly a joke upon themselves ; for they had waited for me on the cold hill-top two full hours before I came, and there was very little fun in that ; they were so chilled that it took them a couple of weeks to get warm again. Moreover, I never had a thought that they would kill me to get money which it was so perfect- ly easy to get without any such folly, and so they did not really frighten me bad enough to make their enjoyment worth the trouble they had taken. I was only afraid that their wea- pons would go off accidentally. Their very numbers inspired me with confidence that no blood would be intentionally spilled. They were not smart ; they ought to have sent only one high- FAREWELL TO SAN FRANCISCO. 569 cayman, with a double-barrelled shot gun, if they desired to see the author of this volume climb a tree. However, I suppose that in the long run I got the largest share of the joke at last ; and in a shape not foreseen by the highwaymen ; for the chilly exposure on the " divide " while I was in a perspiration gave me a cold which developed itself into a troublesome disease and kept my hands idle some three months, besides costing me quite a sum in doctor's bills. Since BEST PART OF THE JOKE. then I play no practical jokes on people and generally lose my temper when one is played upon me. "When I returned to San Francisco I projected a pleasure journey to Japan and thence westward around the world ; but a desire to see home again changed my mind, and I took a berth in the steamship, bade good-bye to the friendliest land and livest, heartiest community on our continent, and came by the way of the Isthmus to New York — a trip that was not much of a pic-nic excursion, for the cholera broke out among us on the passage and we buried two or three bodies at sea every day. I found home a dreary place after my long ab- sence ; for half the children I had known were now wearing 570 A STORY WITH A MORAL. whiskers or waterfalls, and few of the grown people I had been acquainted with remained at their hearthstones prosperous and happy — some of them had wandered to other scenes, some were in jail, and the rest had been hanged. These changes touched me deeply, and I went away and joined the famous Quaker City European Excursion and carried my tears to foreign lands. Thus, after seven years of vicissitudes, ended a " pleasure trip " to the silver mines of Nevada which had originally been intended to occupy only three months. However, I usually miss my calculations further than that. MORAL. If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to it, he is in error. The moral of it is this : If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence ; but if you are " no account," go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceas- ing to be a nuisance to them — if the people you go among suffer by the operation. APPENDIX. APPENDIX BRIEF SKETCH OF MORMON HISTORY. Mormonism is only about forty years old, but its career has been full of stir and adventure from the beginning, and is likely to remain so to the end. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from one end of the country to the other, and the result is that for years they have hated all " Gentiles " indiscriminately and with all their might. Joseph Smith, the finder of the Book of Mormon and founder of the religion, was driven from State to State with his mysterious copperplates and the miraculous stones he read their inscriptions with. Finally he instituted his " church " in Ohio and Brigham Young joined it. The neighbors began to persecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held to the faith and worked hard. He arrested desertion. He did more — he added converts in the midst of the trouble. He rose in favor and importance with the brethren. He was made one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. He shortly fought his way to a higher post and a more powerful — President of the Twelve. The neighbors rose up and drove the Mormons out of Ohio, and they settled in Missouri. Brigham went with them. The Missourians drove them out and they retreated to Nauvoo, Illinois. They prospered there, and built a temple which made some pretensions to architectural grace and achieved some celebrity in a section of country where a brick court-house with a tin dome and a cupola on it was contemplated with reverential awe. But the Mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors. All the proclamations Joseph Smitn could issue denouncing polygamy and repudiating it as utterly anti-Mormon were of no avail ; the people of the neighborhood, on both sides of the Mississippi, claimed that polygamy was practised by the Mor- mons, and not only polygamy but a little of everything that was bad. Brigham returned from a mission to England, where he had established a Mormon newspaper, and he brought back with him several hundred converts to his preaching. His influence among the brethren augmented with every move he made. Finally Nauvoo was invaded by the Missouri and Illinois MORMON HISTORY. 573 Gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed. A Mormon named Rigdon assumed the Presidency of the Mormon church and government, in Smith's place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two. But a greater than he was at hand. Brigham seized the advantage of the hour and without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will, hurled Rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself. He did more. He launched an elaborate curse at Rigdon and his disciples ; and he pronounced Rigdon's " prophecies " ema- nations from the devil, and ended by " handing the false prophet over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand years " — probably the longest term ever inflicted in Illinois. The people recognized their master. They straightway elected Brigham Young President, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered in their devotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast — a quality which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed. He recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved. By his command the people gathered together their meagre effects, turned their backs upon their homes, and their faces toward the wilderness, and on a bitter night in February filed in sorrowful procession across the frozen Mississippi, lighted on their way by the glare from their burning temple, whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired ! They camped, several days afterward, on the western verge of Iowa, and poverty, want, hunger, cold, sickness, grief and persecution did their work, and many succumbed and died — martyrs, fair and true, whatever else they might have been. Two years the remnant remained there, while Brigham and a small party crossed the country and founded Great Salt Lake City, purposely choosing a land which was outside the ownership and juris- diction of the hated American nation. Note that. This was in 1847. Brigham moved his people there and got them settled just in time to see disaster fall again. For the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham's refuge to the enemy — the United States ! In 1849 the Mormons organized a " free and independent " government and erected the " State of Deseret," with Brigham Young as its head. But the very next year Congress deliberately snubbed it and created the " Territory of Utah " out of the same accumula- tion of mountains, sage-brush, alkali and general desolation, — but made Brigham Governor of it. Then for years the enormous migration across the plains to California poured through the land of the Mormons and yet the church remained staunch and true to its lord and master. Neither hunger, thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive the Mor- mons from their faith or their allegiance ; and even the thirst for gold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and strength of many nations was not able to entice them ! That was the final test. An experiment that could survive that was an experiment with some substance to it somewhere. Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the last things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear in the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet Smith, and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dignities, emolu- ments and authorities, upon " President Brigham Young ! " The people 574 APPENDIX A. accepted the pious fraud with the maddest enthusiasm, and Brigham's power was sealed and secured for all time. Within five years afterward he openly added polygamy to the tenets of the church by authority of a " reve- lation " which he pretended had been received nine years before by Joseph Smith, albeit Joseph is amply on record as denouncing polygamy to the day of his death. Now was Brigham become a second Andrew Johnson in the small begin- ning and steady progress of his official grandeur. He had served succes- sively as a disciple in the ranks ; home missionary ; foreign missionary ; editor and publisher ; Apostle ; President of the Board of Apostles ; Presi- dent of all Mormondom, civil and ecclesiastical ; successor to the great Joseph by the will of heaven ; " prophet," " seer," " revelator." There was but one dignity higher which he could aspire to, and he reached out modestly and took that — he proclaimed himself a God ! He claims that he is to have a heaven of his own hereafter, and that he will be its God, and his wives and children its goddesses, princes and prin- cesses. Into it all faithful Mormons will be admitted, with their families, and will take rank and consequence according to the number of their wives and children. If a disciple dies before he has had time to accumulate enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable in the next world any friend can marry a few wives and raise a few children for him after he is dead, and they are duly credited to his account and his heavenly status advanced accordingly. Let it be borne in mind that the majority of tne Mormons have always been ignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted with the world and its ways ; and let it be borne in mind that the wives of these Mormons are necessarily after the same pattern and their children likely to be fit representatives of such a conjunction ; and then let it be remembered that for forty years these creatures have been driven, driven, driven, relent- lessly ! and mobbed, beaten, and shot down ; cursed, despised, expatriated ; banished to a remote desert, whither they journeyed gaunt with famine and disease, disturbing the ancient solitudes with their lamentations and mark- ing the long way with graves of their dead — and all because they were simply trying to live and worship God in the way which they believed with all their hearts and souls to be the true one. Let all these things be borne in mind, and then it will not be hard to account for the deathless hatred which the Mormons bear our people and our government. That hatred has " fed fat its ancient grudge " ever since Mormon Utah developed into a self-supporting realm and the church waxed rich and strong. Brigham as Territorial Governor made it plain that Mormondom was for the Mormons. The United States tried to rectify all that by ap- pointing territorial officers from New England and other anti-Mormon locali- ties, but Brigham prepared to make their entrance into his dominions difficult. Three thousand United States troops had to go across the plains and put these gentlemen in office. And after they were in office they were as helpless as so many stone images. They made laws which nobody MORMON HISTORY. 575 minded and which could not be executed. The federal judges opened court in a land filled with crime and violence and sat as holiday spectacles for in- solent crowds to gape at — for there was nothing to try, nothing to do, noth- ing on the dockets ! And if a Gentile brought a suit, the Mormon jury would do just as it pleased about bringing in a verdict, and when the judg- ment of the court was rendered no Mormon cared for it and no officer could execute it. Our Presidents shipped one cargo of officials after another to Utah, but the result was always the same — they sat in a blight for awhile* they fairly feasted on scowls and insults day by day, they saw every attempt to do their official duties find its reward in darker and darker looks, and in secret threats and warnings of a more and more dismal nature — and at last they either succumbed and became despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got scared and discomforted beyond all endurance and left the Territory. If a brave officer kept on courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliant Buchanan or Pierce would remove him and appoint a stick in his place. In 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah. And so it came very near being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh j udge ! — two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murky comprehension of it which they were enabled to gather from the dictionary. Simply (if for nothing else) for the variety they would have made in a rather monotonous history of Federal servility and helplessness, it is a pity they were not fated to hold office together in Utah. Up to the date of our visit to Utah, such had been the Territorial record. The Territorial government established there had been a hopeless failure, and Brigham Young was the only real power in the land. He was an abso- lute monarch — a monarch who defied our President — a monarch who laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital — a monarch who received without emotion the news that the august Congress of the United States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives. B. THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE. The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long — and which they consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves — they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay. The now almost for- gotten " Mountain Meadows massacre " was their work. It was very famous in its day. The whole United States rang with its horrors. A few items will refresh the reader's memory. A great emigrant train from Missouri- and Arkansas passed through Salt Lake City and a few disaffected Mormons joined it for the sake of the strong protection it afforded for their escape. In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot retaliation by the Mormon chiefs. Besides, these one hundred and forty-five or one hundred and fifty unsus- pecting emigrants being in part from Arkansas, where a noted Mormon missionary had lately been killed, and in part from Missouri, a State re- membered with execrations as a bitter persecutor of the saints when they were few and poor and friendless, here were substantial additional grounds for lack of love for these wayfarers. And finally, this train was rich, very rich in cattle, horses, mules and other property — and how could the Mormons consistently keep up their coveted resemblance to the Israelitish tribes and not seize the " spoil " of an enemy when the Lord had so manifestly " delivered it into their hand ? " Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite's entertaining book, " The Mormon Prophet," it transpired that — " A ' revelation ' from Brigham Young, as Great Grand Archee or God, was dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee and J. D. Lee (adopted son of Brigham), commanding them to raise all the forces they could muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles (so read the revelation), attack them disguised "as Indians, and with the arrows of the Almighty make a elean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale ; and if they needed any assistance they were commanded to hire the Indians as their allies, promising them a share of the booty. They were to be neither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in sending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was the mandate of Almighty God." THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE. 577 The command of the " revelation " was faithfully obeyed. A large party of Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train of emi- grant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and made an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses of their wagons and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for five days ! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the sort of scurvy apologies for " Indians " which the southern part of Utah affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them. At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They retired to the upper end of the " Meadows," resumed civilized apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce ! When the emigrants saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them with cheer after cheer ! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt, they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flag of truce ! The leaders of the timely white " deliverers " were President Haight and Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who served a term as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress from Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders next pro- ceeded : " They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and represented them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle the matter with the Indians. After several hours parley they, having (appa- rently) visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages ; which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp, leaving everything be- hind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormon bishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back to the settlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous of saving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired, and subsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants were marched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, the Mormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about a mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almost all shot down at the fkst fire from the guard. Two only escaped, who fled to the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before they were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two or three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aid of the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all the emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, the eldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of September, 1857, was consum- mated one of the most cruel, cowardly and bloody murders known in our history." The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was one hundred and twenty. With unheard-of temerity Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court and pro- 37f 57S • APPENDIX B. ceeded to make Morinondom answer for the massacre. And what a spectacle it must have been to see this grim veteran, solitary and alone in his pride and his pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory, deriding them by turns, and by turns " breathing threatenings and slaugh- ter ! " An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and of the occasion : " He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson ; but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges, while threats of violeuce were heard in every quarter, and an attack on the U. S. troops in- timated, if he persisted in his course. " Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were discharged, with a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then, sitting as a committing magistrate, he commenced his task alone. He examined witnesses, made arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom was born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping to save their necks ; and developments of the most startling character were being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the many murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past eight years." Had Harney been Governor, Cradlebaugh would have been supported in his work, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of Mormon guilt in this massacre and in a number of previous murders, would have conferred gra- tuitous coffins upon certain citizens, together with occasion to use them. But Cumming was the Federal Governor, and he, under a curious pretense of impartiality, sought to screen the Mormons from the demands of justice. On one occasion he even went so far as to publish his protest against the use of the U. S. troops in aid of Cradlebaugh's proceedings. Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre with the following remark and accompanying summary of the testimony — and the summary is concise, accurate and reliable : " For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the guilt of Young and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here collated and circumstances given which go not merely to implicate but to fasten conviction upon them by ' confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ : ' " 1, The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the affair, as shown by the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy U. S. Marshal Rodgers. " 2. The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it in his Report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Also his failure to make any allusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several years after the occur- rence. " 3. The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the Mormon Church and State, when this affair was brought to the ordeal of a judicial investigation. " 4. The failure of the Deseret News, the Church organ, and the only paper then published in the Territory, to notice the massacre until severaJ THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE. 579 months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were engaged in it. " 5. The testimony of the children saved from the massacre. " 6. The children and the property of the emigrants found in possession of the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the very day after the massacre. " 7. The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene of the massacre : these statements are shown, not only by Cradlebaugh and Rodgers, but by a number of military officers, and by J. Forney, who was, in 1859, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. To all these were such statements freely and frequently made by the Indians. " 8. The testimony of R. P. Campbell, Capt. 2d Dragoons, who was sent in the Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara, to protect travelers on the road to California and to inquire into Indian depredations/ 1 c. CONCERNING A FRIGHTFUL ASSASSINATION THAT WAS NEVER CONSUMMATED. [If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill, Nevada. If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfired gun- powder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Wiegand. If ever there was an oyster that fancied itself a whale ; or a jack-o'lantern, confined to a swamp, that fancied itself a planet with a billion-mile orbit ; or a summer zephyr that deemed itself a hurricane, it is Conrad Wiegand. Therefore, what wonder is it that when he says a thing, he thinks the world listens ; that when he does a thing the world stands still to look ; and that when he suffers, there is a convulsion of nature ? When I met Conrad, he was " Superintendent of the Gold Hill Assay Office " — and he was not only its Superintendent, but its entire force. And he was a street preacher, too, with a mongrel religion of his own invention, whereby he expected to regenerate the universe. This was years ago. Here latterly he has entered journalism ; and his journalism is what it might be expected to be : colossal to ear, but pigmy to the eye. It is extravagant grandiloquence confined to a newspaper about the size of a double letter sheet. He doubtless edits, sets the type, and prints his paper, all alone ; but he delights to speak of the concern as if it occupies a block and employs a thousand men. [Something less than two years ago, Conrad assailed several people mercilessly in his little " People's Tribune," and got himself into trouble. Straightway he airs the affair in the " Territorial Enterprise," in a commu- nication over his own signature, and I propose to reproduce it here, in all its native simplicity and more than human candor. Long as it is, it is well worth reading, for it is the richest specimen of journalistic literature the kistory of America can furnish, perhaps :] From the Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 20, 1870. A SEEMING PLOT FOR ASSASSINATION MISCARRIED. To the Editor of the Enterprise : Months ago, when Mr. Sutro in- cidentally exposed mining management on the Comstock, and among others PERSECUTION OF THE HERO. 581 roused me to protest against its continuance, in great kindness you warned me that any attempt by publications, by public meetings and by legislative action, aimed at the correction of chronic mining evils in Storey County, must entail upon me (a) business ruin, (&) the burden of all its costs, (c) per- sonal violence, and if my purpose were persisted in, then (d) assassination, and after all nothing would be effected. TOUR PROPHECY FULFILLING. In large part at least your prophecies have been fulfilled, for (a) assaying, which was well attended to in the Gold Hill Assay Office (of which I am superintendent), in consequence of my publications, has been taken else- where, so the President of one of the companies assures me. With no reason assigned, other work has been taken away. With but one or two important exceptions, our assay business now consists simply of the gleanings of the vicinity, (b) Though my own personal donations to the People's Tribute Association have already exceeded $1,500, outside of our own num- bers we have received (in money) less than $300 as contributions and sub- scriptions for the journal, (c) On Thursday last, on the main street in Gold Hill, near noon, with neither warning nor cause assigned, by a powerful blow I was felled to the ground, and while down I was kicked by a man who it. would seem had been led to believe that I had spoken derogatorily of him. By whom he was so induced to believe I am as yet unable to say. On Saturday last I was again assailed and beaten by a man who first informed me why he did so, and who persisted in making his assault even after the erroneous impression under which he also was at first laboring had been cleavly and repeatedly pointed out. This same man, after failing through intimidation to elicit from me the names of our editorial contributors, against giving which he knew me to be pledged, beat himself weary upon me with a raw hide, I not resisting, and then pantingly threatened me with permanent disfiguring mayhem, if ever again I should introduce his name into print, and who but a few minutes before his attack upon me assured me that the only reason I was "permitted" to reach home alive on Wednesday evening last (at which time the People's Tribune was issued) was, that he deems me only half-witted, and be it remembered the very next morning I was knocked down and kicked by a man who seemed to be prepared for flight. [Re sees doom impending ;] WHEN WILL THE CIRCLE JOIN? How long before the whole of your prophecy will be fulfilled I cannot say, but under the shadow of so much fulfillment in so short a time, and with such threats from a man who is one of the most prominent exponents of the San Francisco mining-ring staring me and this whole community defiantly in the face and pointing to a completion of your augury, do you blame me for feeling that this communication is the last I shall ever write for the Press, especially when a sense alike of personal self-respect, of duty to this money-oppressed and fear-ridden community, and of American fealty 582 APPENDIX C. to the spirit of true Liberty all command me, and each more loudly than love of life itself, to declare the name of that prominent man to be JOHN B. WINTERS, President of the Yellow Jacket Company, a political aspirant and a military General ? The name of his partially duped accomplice and abettor in this last marvelous assault, is no other than PHILIP LYNCH, Editor and Proprietor of the Gold Hill News. Despite the insult and wrong heaped upon me by John B. Winters, on Saturday afternoon, only a glimpse of which I shall be able to afford your readers, so much do I deplore clinching (by publicity) a serious mistake of any one, man or woman, committed under natural and not self-wrought passion, in view of his great apparent excitement at the time and in view of the almost perfect privacy of the assault, I am far from sure that I should not have given him space for repentance before exposing him, were it not that he himself has so far exposed the matter as to make it the common talk of the town that he has horsewhipped me. That fact having been made public, all the facts in connection need to be also, or silence on my part would seem more than singular, and with many would be proof either that I was conscious of some unworthy aim in publishing the article, or else that my " non-combatant " principles are but a convenient cloak alike of physi- cal and moral cowardice. I therefore shall try to present a graphic but truthful picture of this whole affair, but shall forbear all comments, pre- suming that the editors of our own journal, if others do not, will speak freely and fittingly upon this subject in our next number, whether I shall then be dead or living, for my death will not stop, though it may suspend, the publication of the People's Tribune. [The "non-combatant" sticks to principle, out takes along a friend or two of a conveniently different stripe :] THE TRAP SET. On Saturday morning John B. Winters sent verbal word to the Gold Hill Assay Office that he desired to see me at the Yellow Jacket office. Though such a request struck me as decidedly cool in view of his own recent dis- courtesies to me there alike as a publisher and as a stockholder in the Yellow Jacket mine, and though it seemed to me more like a summons than the courteous request by one gentleman to another for a favor, hoping that some conference with Sharon looking to the betterment of mining mat- ters in Nevada might arise from it, I felt strongly inclined to overlook what 'possibly was simply an oversight in courtesy. But as then it had only been two days since I had been bruised and beaten under a hasty and false apprehension of facts, my caution was somewhat aroused. Moreover I re- membered sensitively his contemptuousness of manner to me at my last interview in his office. I therefore felt it needful, if I went at all, to go accompanied by a friend whom he would not dare to treat with incivility, and whose presence with me might secure exemption from insult. Accord- ingly I asked a neighbor to accompany me. PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES TAKEN. 583 THE TRAP ALMOST DETECTED. Although. I was not then aware of this fact, it would seem that previous to my request this same neighbor had heard Dr. Zabriskie state publicly in a saloon, that Mr. Winters had told him he had decided either to kill or to horsewhip me, but had not finally decided on which. My neighbor, there- fore, felt unwilling to go down with me until he had first called on Mr. Winters alone. He therefore paid him a visit. From that interview he assured me that he gathered the impression that he did not believe I would have any difficulty with Mr. Winters, and that he (Winters) would call on me at four o'clock in my own office. MY OWN PRECAUTIONS. As Sheriff Cummings was in Gold Hill that afternoon, and as I desired to converse with him about the previous assault, I invited him to my office, and he came. Although a half hour had passed beyond four o'clock, Mr. Winters had not called, and we both of us began preparing to go home. Just then, Philip Lynch, Publisher of the Gold Hill News, came in and said, blandly and cheerily, as if bringing good news : " Hello, John B. Winters wants to see you." I replied, " Indeed ! Why he sent me word that he would call on me here this afternoon at four o'clock ! " "O, well, it don't do to be too ceremonious just now, he's in my office, and that will do as well — come on in, Winters wants to consult with you alone. He's got something to say to you." Though slightly uneasy at this change of programme, yet believing that in an editor's house I ought to be safe, and anyhow that I would be within hail of the street, I hurriedly, and but partially whispered my dim apprehen- sions to Mr. Cummings, and asked him if he would not keep near enough to hear my voice in case I should call. He consented to do so while waiting for some other parties, and to come in if he heard my voice or thought I had need of protection. On reaching the editorial part of the News office, which viewed from the street is dark, I did not see Mr. Winters, and again my misgivings arose. Had I paused long enough to consider the case, I should have invited Sheriff Cummings in, but as Lynch went down stairs, he said : " This way, Wie- gand — it's best to be private," or some such remark. [I do not desire to strain the reader's fancy, hurtfully, and yet it would be a favor to me if he would try to fancy this lamb in battle, or the duelling ground or at the head of a vigilance committee — M. T. :] I followed, and toithout Mr. Cummings, and without arms, which I never do or will carry, unless as a soldier in war, or unless I should yet come to feel I must fight a duel, or to join and aid in the ranks of a necessary Vigi- lance Committee. But by following I made a fatal mistake. Following 5S4: APPENDIX C. was entering a trap, and whatever animal suffers itself to be caught should expect the common fate of a caged rat, as I fear events to come will prove. Traps commonly are not set for benevolence. [His body-guard is shut out ;] THE TRAP INSIDE. I followed Lynch down stairs. At their foot a door to the left opened into a small room. From that room another door opened into yet another room, and once entered I found myself inveigled into what many will ever henceforth regard as a private subterranean Gold Hill den, admirably adapt- ed in proper hands to the purposes of murder, raw or disguised, for from it, with both or even one door closed, when too late, I saw that I could not be heard by Sheriff Cummings, and from it, BY VIOLENCE AND BY FORCE, I was prevented from making a peaceable exit, when I thought I saw tKe studious object of this "consultation" was no other than to compass my killing, in the presence of Philip Lynch as a witness, as soon as by insult a proverbially excitable man should be exasperated to the point of assailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch, by his conscience and by his well known tenderness of heart toward the rich and potent would be compelled to testify that he saw Gen. John B. Winters kill Conrad Wiegand in " self-defence." But I am going too fast. OUR HOST. Mr. Lynch was present during the most of the time (say a little short of an hour), but three times he left the room. His testimony, therefore, would be available only as to the bulk of what transpired. On entering this carpeted den I was invited to a seat near one corner of the room. Mr. Lynch took a seat near the window. J. B. Winters sat (at first) near the door, and began his remarks essentially as follows : " I have come here to exact of you a retraction, in black and white, of those damnably false charges which you have preferred against me in that infamous lying sheet of yours, and you must declare yourself their author, that you published them knowing them to be false, and that your motives were malicious." " Hold, Mr. Winters. Your language is insulting and your demand an enormity. I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted or coerced. I supposed myself here by invitation of Mr. Lynch, at your request." " Nor did I come here to insult you. I have already told you that I am here for a very different purpose." " Yet your language has been offensive, and even now shows strong ex- citement. If insult is repeated I shall either leave the room or call in Sheriff Cummings, whom I just left standing and waiting for me outside the door." " No, you won't, sir. You may just as well understand it at once as not Here you are my man, and I'll tell you why ! Months ago you put your property out of your hands, boasting that you did so to escape losing it on prosecution for libel." PRESSING MATTERS. 585 " It is true that I did convert all my immovable property into personal property, such as I could trust safely to others, and chiefly to escape ruin through possible libel suits." " Very good, sir. Having placed yourself beyond the pale of the law, may G&d help your soul if you DON'T make precisely such a retraction as I have demanded. I've got you now, and by before you can get out of this room you've got to both write and sign precisely the retraction I have demanded, and before you go, anyhow — you low-lived lying , I'll teach you what personal responsibility is outside of the law ; and, by , Sheriff Cummings and all the friends you've got in the world besides, can't save you, you , etc. ! No, sir. I'm alone now, and Vm. prepared to be shot down just here and now rather than be villified by you as I have been, and suffer you to escape me after publishing those charges, not only here where I am known and universally respected, but where I am not personally known and may be injured." I confess this speech, with its terrible and but too plainly implied threat of killing me if I did not sign the paper he demanded, terrified me, espe- cially as I saw he was working himself up to the highest possible pitch of passion, and instinct told me that any reply other than one of seeming con- cession to his demands would only be fuel to a raging fire, so I replied : " Well, if I've got to sign ," and then I paused some time. Resum- ing, I said, " But, Mr. Winters, you are greatly excited. Besides, I see you are laboring under a total misapprehension. It is your duty not to inflame but to calm yourself. I am prepared to show you, if you will only point out the article that you allude to, that you regard as ' charges ' what no calm and logical mind has any right to regard as such. Show me the charges, and I will try, at all events ; and if it becomes plain that no charges have been preferred, then plainly there can be nothing to retract, and no one could rightly urge you to demand a retraction. You should beware of mak- ing so serious a mistake, for however honest a man may be, every one is liable to misapprehend. Besides you assume that 1 am the author of some certain article which you have not pointed out. It is hasty to do so." He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a Tribune article, headed " What's the Matter with Yellow Jacket ? " saying " That's what I refer to." To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paper and looked it over for aw T hile, he remaining silent, and as I hoped, cooling. I then resumed, saying, " As I supposed. I do not admit having written that article, nor nave you any right to assume so important a point, and then base important action upon your assumption. You might deeply regret it afterwards. In my published Address to the People, I notified the world that no information as to the authorship of any article would be given without the consent of the writer. I therefore cannot honorably tell you icho wrote that article, nor can you exact it." " If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is ? " " I must decline to sav." 586 APPENDIX C. " Then, by , I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accord- ingly." " Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I notice is, that you regard them as ' charges ' at all, when their context, both at their beginning and end, show they are not. These words introduce them : ' Such an investigation [just before indicated], we think MIGHT result in showing some of the following points' Then follow eleven specifications, and the succeeding paragraph shows that the suggested investigation ' might EX- ONERATE those who are generally believed guilty.' You see, therefore, the context proves they are not preferred as charges, and this you seem to have overlooked." While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me in such a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to consider candidly the thoughts contained in my words. He insisted upon it that they were charges, and " By ," he would make me take them back as charges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to whom I then appealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor, calling his attention especially to the introductory paragraph just before quoted. He replied, " If they are not charges, they certainly are insinuations" whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his demands for retraction precisely such as he had before named, except that he would allow me to state who did write the article if I did not myself, and this time shaking his fist in my face with more cursings and epithets. When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried to rise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me down, as he did every other time (at least seven or eight), when under similar imminent danger of bruising by his fist (or for aught I could know worse than that after the first stunning blow), which he could easily and safely to himself have dealt me so long as he kept me down and stood over me. This fact it was, which more than anything else, convinced me that by plan and plot I was purposely made powerless in Mr. Winters' hands, and that he did not mean to allow me that advantage of being afoot, which he possessed. Moreover, I then became convinced, that Philip Lynch (and for what reason I wondered) would do absolutely nothing to protect me in his own house. I realized then the situation thoroughly. I had found it equally vain to protest or argue, and I would make no unmanly appeal for pity, still less apologize. Yet my life had been by the plainest possible implication threatened. I was a weak man. I was unarmed. I was help- lessly down, and Winters was afoot and probably armed. Lynch was the ,only "witness." The statements demanded, if given and not explained, would utterly sink me in my own self-respect, in my family's eyes, and in the eyes of the community. On the other hand, should I give the author's name how could I ever expect that confidence of the People which I should no longer deserve, and how much dearer to me and to my family was my life than the life of the real author to his friends. Yet life seemed dear and each minute that remained seemed precious if not solemn. I sincerely trust STRATEGY AGAINST STRENGTH. 587 that neither you nor any of your readers, and especially none with families, may ever be placed in such seeming direct proximity to death while obliged to decide the one question I was compelled to, viz. : What should I do — I, a man of family, and not as Mr. Winters is, " alone." [The reader is requested not to skip the following. — M. T. :] STRATEGY AND MESMERISM. To gain time for further reflection, and hoping that by a, seeming acquies- cence I might regain my personal liberty, at least till I could give an alarm, or take advantage of some momentary inadvertence of Winters, and then without a cowardly flight escape, I resolved to write a certain kind of retrac- tion, but previously had inwardly decided First. — That I would studiously avoid every action which might be con- strued into the drawing of a weapon, even by a self-infujiated man, no matter what amount of insult might be heaped upon me, for it seemed to me that this great excess of compound profanity, foulness and epithet must be more than a mere indulgence, and therefore must have some object. " Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird." Therefore, as before without thought, I thereafter by intent kept my hands away from my pockets, and generally in sight and spread upon my knees. Second. — I resolved to make no motion with my arms or hands which could possibly be construed into aggression. Third. — I resolved completely to govern my outward manner and sup- press indignation. To do this, I must govern my spirit. To do that, by force of imagination I was obliged like actors on the boards to resolve myself into an unnatural mental state and see all things through the eyes of an assumed character. Fourth. — I resolved to try on Winters, silently, and unconsciously to him- self a mesmeric power which I possess over certain kinds of people, and which at times I have found to work even in the dark over the lower animals. Does any one smile at these last counts ? God save you from ever being obliged to beat in a game of chess, whose stake is your life, you having but four poor pawns and pieces and your adversary with his full force unshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth of will, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it may help you ; try it at all events. In this instance I was conscious of power coining into me, and by a law of nature, I know Winters was correspondingly weakened. If I could have gained more time I am sure he would not even have struck me It takes time both to form such resolutions and to recite them. That time, however, I gained while thinking of my retraction, which I first wrote in pencil, altering it from time to time till I got it to suit me, my aim being to make it look like a concession to demands, while in fact it should tersely speak the truth into Mr. Winters' mind. When it was finished, I copied it in ink, and if correctly copied from my first draft it should read as follows. In copying I do not think I made any material change. 5SS APPENDIX C. COPY. To Philip Lynch, Editor of the Gold Hill News : I learn that Gen. John B. Winters believes the following (pasted on) clipping from the People's Tribune of January to contain distinct charges of mine against him person- ally, and that as such he desires me to retract them unqualifiedly. In compliance with his request, permit me to say that, although Mr. Winters and I see this matter differently, in view of his strong feelings in the premises, I hereby declare that I do not know those " charges " (if such they are) to be true, and I hope that a critical examination would altogether disprove them. CONRAD WIEGAND. Gold Hill, January 15, 1870. I then read what I had written and handed it to Mr. Lynch, whereupon Mr. Winters said : " That's not satisfactory, and it won't do ; " and then addressing himself to Mr. Lynch, he further said : " How does it strike you ? " " Well, I confess I don't see that it retracts anything." " Nor do I," said Winters ; " in fact, I regard it as adding insult to injury. Mr. Wiegand you've got to do better than that. You are not the man who can pull wool over my eyes." " That, sir, is the only retraction I can write." " No it isn't, sir, and if you so much as say so again you do it at your peril, for I'll thrash you to within an inch of your life, and, by , sir, I don't pledge myself to spare you even that inch either. I want you to un- derstand I have asked you for a very different paper, and that paper you've got to sign." " Mr. Winters, I assure you that I do not wish to irritate you, but, at the same time, it is utterly impossible for me to write any other paper than that which I have written. If you are resolved to compel me to sign something, Philip Lynch's hand must write at your dictation, and if, when written, I can sign it I will do so, but such a document as you say you must have from me, I never can sign. I mean what I say." " Well, sir, what's to be done must be done quickly, for I've been here long enough already. I'll put the thing in another shape (and then pointing to the paper)^ don't you know those charges to be false ? " " I do not." " Do you know them to be true ? " " Of my own personal knowledge I do not." " Why then did yoa print them ? " " Because rightly considered in their connection they are not charges, but pertinent and useful suggestions in answer to the queries of a correspondent who stated facts which are inexplicable." " Don't you know that /know they are false?" " If you do, the proper course is simply to deny them and court an inves- tigation." A GREAT RELIEF EXPERIENCED. 589 " And do YOU claim the right to make ME come out and deny anything you may choose to write and print ? " To that question I think I made no reply, and he then further said : " Come, now, we've talked about the matter long enough. I want your final answer — did you write that article or not ? " " I cannot in honor tell you who wrote it." " Did you not see it before it was printed ? " " Most certainly, sir." " And did you deem it a fit thing to publish ? " " Most assuredly, sir, or I would never have consented to its appearance. Of its authorship I can say nothing whatever, but for its publication I assume full, sole and personal responsibility." " And do you then retract it or not ? " " Mr. Winters, if my refusal to sign such a paper as you have demanded must entail upon me all that your language in this room fairly implies, then I ask a few minutes for prayer." " Prayer ! you, this is not your hour for prayer — your time to pray was when you were writing those lying charges. Will you sign or not ? " " You already have my answer." " What ! do you still refuse ?" " I do, sir." " Take that, then," and to my amazement and inexpressible relief he drew only a rawhide instead of what I expected — a bludgeon or pistol. With it, as he spoke, he struck at my left ear downwards, as if to tear it off, and afterwards on the side of the head. As he moved away to get a better chance for a more effective shot, for the first time I gained a chance under peril to rise, and I did so pitying him from the very bottom of my soul, to think that one so naturally capable of true dignity, power and nobility could, by the temptations of this State, and by unfortunate associations and aspira- tions, be so deeply debased as to find in such brutality anything which he could call satisfaction — but the great hope for us all is in progress and growth, and John B. Winters, I trust, will yet be able to comprehend my feelings. He continued to beat me with all his great force, until absolutely weary, exhausted and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose of non- aggressive defence, and made no other use of my arms than to defend my head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain arising from the blows he inflicted upon my person was of course transient, and my clothing to some extent deadened its severity, as it now hides all remaining traces. When I supposed he was through, taking the butt end of his weapon and shaking it in my face, he warned me, if I correctly understood him, of more yet to come, and furthermore said, if ever I again dared introduce his name to print, in either my own or any other public journal, he would cut off my left ear (and I do not think he was jesting) and send me home to my family a visibly mutilated man, to be a standing warning to all low-lived puppies 590 APPENDIX C. who seek to blackmail gentlemen and to inj ure their good names. And when he did so operate, he informed me that his implement would not be a whip but a knife. When he had said this, unaccompanied by Mr. Lynch, as I remember it, he left the room, for I sat down by Mr. Lynch, exclaiming : " The man is mad — he is utterly mad — this step is his ruin — it is a mistake— it would be ungenerous in me, despite of all the ill usage I have here received, to expose, him, at least until he has had an opportunity to reflect upon the matter. I> shall be in no haste," "Winters is very mad just now," replied Mr. Lynch, "but when he is himself he is one of the finest men I ever met. In fact, he told me the reason he did not meet you upstairs was to spare you the humiliation of a beating in the sight of others." I submit that that unguarded remark of Philip Lynch convicts him of having been privy in advance to Mr. Winters' intentions whatever they may have been, or at least to his meaning to make an assault upon me, but I leave to others to determine how much censure an editor deserves for inveigling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to a pen of his own to be horsewhipped, if no worse, for the simple printing of what is verbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men, and women too, upon the street. While writing this account two theories have occurred to me as possibly true respecting this most remarkable assault : First — The aim may have been simply to extort from me such admissions as in the hands of money and influence would have sent me to the Peniten- tiary for libel. This, however, seems unlikely, because any statements elicited by fear or force could not be evidence in law or could be so explained as to have no force. The statements wanted so badly must have been desired for some other purpose. Second — The other theory has so dark and wilfully murderous a look that I shrink from writing it, yet as in all probability my death at the earli- est practicable moment has already been decreed, I feel I should do all I can before my hour arrives, at least to show others how to break up that aristo- cratic rule and combination which has robbed all Nevada of true freedom, if not of manhood itself. Although I do not prefer this hypothesis as a "charge," I feel that as an American citizen I still have a right both to think and to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharon and Winters, and as much so respecting the theory of a brutal assault (especially when I have been its subject) as respecting any other apparent enormity. I give the mat- ter simply as a suggestion which may explain to the proper authorities and to the people whom they should represent, a well ascertained but notwithstand- ing a darkly mysterious fact. The scheme of the assault may have been First — To terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness after making actual though not legal threats against my life. Second — To imply that I could save my life only by writing or signing certain specific statements which if not subsequently explained would eter- nally have branded me as infamous and would have consigned my family to shame and want, and to the dreadful compassion and patronage of the rich. AN HEROIC RESOLUTION. 591 Third — To blow 1117 brains out the moment I had signed, thereby pre- venting nie f roni making any subsequent explanation sucli as could remove the infamy. Fourth — Philip Lynch to be compelled to testify that I was killed by John B. Winters in self-defence, for the conviction of Winters would bring him in as an accomplice. If that was the programme in John B. Winters' mind nothing saved my life but my persistent refusal to sign, when that refusal seemed clearly to me to be the choice of death. The remarkable assertion made to me by Mr. Winters, that pity only spared my life on Wednesday evening last, almost compels me to believe that at first he could not have intended me to leave that room alive ; and why I was allowed to, unless through mesmeric or some other invisible influ- ence, I cannot divine. The more I reflect upon this matter, the more probable as true does this horrible interpretation become. The narration of these things I might have spared both to Mr. Winters and to the public had he himself observed silence, but as he has both verb- ally spoken and suffered a thoroughly garbled statement of facts to appear in the Gold Hill News I feel it due to myself no less than to this community, and to the entire independent press of America and Great Britain, to give a true account of what even the Gold Hill News has pronounced a disgrace- ful affair, and which it deeply regrets because of some alleged telegraphic mistake in the account of it. [Who received the erroneous telegrams ?] Though he may not deem it prudent to take my life just now, the publi- cation of this article I feel sure must compel Gen. Winters (with his peculiar views about his right to exemption from criticism by me) to resolve on my violent death, though it may take years to compass it. Notwithstanding 1 bear him no ill will; and if W. C. Ralston and William Sharon, and other members of the San Francisco mining and milling Ring feel that he above all other men in this State and California is the most fitting man to supervise and control Yellow Jacket matters, until I am able to vote more than half their stock I presume he will be retained to grace his present post. Meantime, I cordially invite all who know of any sort of important villainy which only can be cured by exposure (and who would expose it if they felt sure they would not be betrayed under bullying threats), to communicatt* with the People's Tribune ; for until I am murdered, so long as I can raise the means to publish, I propose to continue my efforts at least to revive the liberties of the State, to curb oppression, and to benefit man's world and God's earth. CONRAD WIEGAND. [It does seem a pity that the Sheriff was shut out, since the good sense of a general of militia and of a prominent editor failed to teach them that the merited castigation of this weak, half-witted child was a thing that ought to have been done in the street, where the poor thing could have a ichance to run. When a journalist maligns a citizen, or attacks his good name on hearsay evidence, he deserves to be thrashed for it, even if he is a " non-combatant " weakling ; but a generous adversary would at least allow such a lamb the use of his legs at such a time. — M. T.] Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724) 779-2111 ^m ■ ■ H -'vas 1 ' K H ■ nsvi